The deadline for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize has been extended to October 15, 2021.
Every year, the University of Arkansas Press accepts submissions for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and from the books selected awards the $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize in the following summer. For almost a quarter century the press has made this series the cornerstone of its work as a publisher of some of the country’s best new poetry. The series and prize are named for and operated to honor the cofounder and longtime director of the press, Miller Williams.
“I love poems that vivify and disturb,” says series editor Patrica Smith. “No matter what genre we write in, we’re all essentially storytellers — but it’s poets who toil most industriously, telling huge unwieldy stories within tight and gorgeously controlled confines, stories that are structurally and sonically adventurous, and it’s magic every time it happens. Simply put, when I read a poetry book, I want something to shift in my chest. I want my world to change.”
J. Bailey Hutchinson was named the winner of the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Her collection Gut will be published in March, 2022. In addition to selecting Hutchinson’s Gut, Patricia Smith chose as finalists for the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Michael Mlekoday’s manuscript All Earthly Bodies and Casey Thayer’s manuscript Rational Anthem, both of which will also be published in the spring of 2022.