J. Bailey Hutchinson, winner of the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize for her debut collection Gut, will read with the Open Mouth Poetry Series on Sunday, April 10, 2022 at 7:00pm. The reading will be preceded by a round of single-poem introductory readings by Geffrey Davis, David Brunson, Peter Mason, Hiba Tahir, Jami Padgett, Cal Paule, Ivana Aponte (translated by David Brunson), Michelle Zamanian, Aeon Ginsberg, Ashley Roach-Frieman, and Marlin M. Jenkins.
“I couldn’t be more energized and excited knowing that J. Bailey Hutchinson’s Gut is the first winning manuscript in my tenure as the Miller Williams series editor,” wrote series editor Patricia Smith. “In addition to snagging first place, Gut also grabs the honor for the most appropriate manuscript title ever—because the gut is exactly where this book hits, relentlessly, poem after poem, page after page. Here is family attending to its family business, its love, its suspicions, and its fears under an insisting sun or a cold and tenacious moon. Here is the thunderous Mississippi River coursing through it all, scrubbing some things blameless, washing away others. Here is bold southern sensibility, rapturous and addictive, crafting poems that are impossible to turn away from. Bailey touts a smoldering command of her slice of the world, and her astute ability to recreate all the delightful nuances of that world is fully at work in this winning book.”