2023 James Welch Prize
View our 2023 James Welch Prize winners and finalists in this online folio, featuring the full poems of m.s. RedCherries and Nicole Wallace.
All posts filed under: PoNW Prize & Award Winners
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL Three Poems
under water, behind glass
Stephen Dunn: Five Early Poems
Periodically, we’ll take a tour of the Poetry Northwest archives, spotlighting vital poems and writers from the magazine’s fifty-plus year history. Previous entries in the series can be found here. This edition features early work from the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn, a frequent contributor to the magazine during the seventies, eighties and beyond. Here are five poems as they originally appeared in Poetry Northwest, with the poet’s reflection on what these pieces mean to him now. Before I begin to say anything about these poems that appeared in Poetry Northwest many years ago, a few dating back to 1969, I want to thank David Wagoner for recognizing a quality in them worthy of publication. He was the first editor of an important magazine to regularly publish my work, and therefore helped develop in me a confidence that I might have a little something on which to build. It may not be possible, but I’m going to try to look at these poems as if they were written by someone else. “Affirmation” is amazingly …
2012 Theodore Roethke & Carolyn Kizer Prizes
Nate Klug is the recipient of a Theodore Roethke Prize for poems appearing in the Fall & Winter 2012-2013 issue of Poetry Northwest. Sarah Lindsay is the recipient of the Carolyn Kizer Prize for poems appearing in the Spring & Summer 2012 issue of Poetry Northwest. The Theodore Roethke Prize and the Carolyn Kizer Prize are awarded to recognize the best work published in Poetry Northwest each year. There is no application process; only poems published in the magazine are eligible for consideration. For a list of past winners of these and other prizes, visit here. — We would also like to extend our congratulations to Timothy Donnelly and–again!–Sarah Lindsay, each a winner of a Pushcart Prize for poems published in the Spring & Summer 2012 issue of Poetry Northwest. — photo from an original by aurelio.asiain via photopin cc
Susan Stewart Memory and Imagination: Three Poems
Editor’s note: Every few months, we’ll take a tour of the archives, highlighting poems and writers from Poetry Northwest‘s fifty-plus year history. The first in the series featured poet and essayist Albert Goldbarth. This, the second, spotlights early work by the poet and critic Susan Stewart. David Wagoner, editor of Poetry Northwest for some 35 years, was well-known for publishing new and younger writers beside those more established—a tradition editor Kevin Craft has carried forward. For Mr. Wagoner, one of those young writers was Susan Stewart, whose work when it appeared in the magazine had an immediate impact, winning several prizes awarded by the magazine at the time. Here are three of those poems as they originally appeared in Poetry Northwest, with the poet’s own reflection on what these pieces mean to her now. — My first response to these lyrics is a feeling of deep retrospective gratitude to David Wagoner for publishing them and sending encouragement. Although I had admired his poems and had been reading Poetry Northwest since my college years, David Wagoner …
Interview // Hugo Prize Winner Derick Burleson
By Kevin Craft
Theodore Roethke Prize 2010
Eric McHenry is the recipient of the Theodore Roethke Prize for poems appearing in the Fall & Winter 2010-2011 (v5.n2) issue of Poetry Northwest. Read one of the prize-winning poems,“Deathbed Confession,” below, introduced by the author. The Theodore Roethke Prize is awarded to recognize the best work published in Poetry Northwest each year. There is no application process; only poems published in the magazine are eligible for consideration. To read the work of last year’s recipient, visit here. For a list of past winners, visit here. The man who called himself Dan Cooper — and who came to be known, through a journalist’s error, as D.B. Cooper — probably didn’t survive his jump from the plane. (There was a time when investigators believed that only an expert parachutist would have attempted such a dangerous jump. Now most believe that only an idiot would have.) But if he did survive, I promise you this: nothing infuriates him more than reading about someone’s recently deceased husband or father who with his last breath confessed to being the …
Richard Hugo Prize 2009
Kenneth Fields is the recipient of the Richard Hugo Prize for his poem “One Love,” published in the Fall & Winter 2009-2010 issue (v4.n2) of Poetry Northwest. Read the winning poem below. _____________________________________________ The Theodore Roethke Prize and the Richard Hugo Prize are awarded to recognize the best work published in Poetry Northwest each year. There is no application process; only poems published in the magazine are eligible for consideration. Mary Jo Salter is the recipient of the 2009 Theodore Roethke Prize. For a list of the previous year’s recipients, visit here. _____________________________________________ ANY CHARACTER HERE One Love +++ Thailand, Laos, Cambodia Buddha’s birthday Four figures, stone to gold One leaning forward, Compassion, ready To move, come back To tell us the house is on fire +++ * * * The tuk-tuk driver Believes We need new clothing +++ * * * Freed the souls of little birds Who let themselves be caged again For seed +++ * * * Sacred figures draped in yellow Bas-reliefs crumbling away Wat overgrown returning to earth +++ * …
Theodore Roethke Prize 2009
Mary Jo Salter is the recipient of the Theodore Roethke Prize for her poems “Unbroken Music” and “From a Balcony, Lake Como,” appearing in the Fall & Winter 2009-2010 (v4.n2) issue of Poetry Northwest. Read “Unbroken Music,” introduced by the author, below. _____________________________________________ The Theodore Roethke Prize and the Richard Hugo Prize are awarded to recognize the best work published in Poetry Northwest each year. There is no application process; only poems published in the magazine are eligible for consideration. Kenneth Fields is the recipient of the 2009 Richard Hugo Prize. For a list of the previous year’s recipients, visit here. _____________________________________________
Theodore Roethke Prize & Richard Hugo Prize 2008
Robert Bly & Rebecca Starks awarded prizes for the best work published in Poetry Northwest in 2008. 2008 Theodore Roethke Prize Robert Bly of Minneapolis, Minnesota is the recipient of the Theodore Roethke Award for his poem “War and Childhood,” published in the Spring / Summer 2008 Political Poetry issue.