Hugh Martin is the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize winner for his first collection of poems, The Stick Soldiers. Cornelius Eady selected this manuscript and will write a Foreword to the published collection. Martin will receive a $1,500 honorarium and book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in March, 2013, in the A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series.
An annual competition, the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize is open to poets who have yet to publish a full-length-book collection of poetry. This year’s runner-ups were The Reformation by Katherine Bode-Lang and Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes by Kerrin McCadden. Hugh Martin’s winning manuscript was chosen from a field of over 500 entries.
Hugh Martin says, “It is an honor to be selected for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. My sincere gratitude goes out to Cornelius Eady, Peter Conners, and BOA Editions for selecting my manuscript. It’s exciting to know that these poems will get out into the world with such a fantastic press.”
BOA Editions will accept manuscripts for the 12th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize between August 1, 2012 and November 30, 2012. An entry form and fee are required. The guidelines and final judge for the 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize will be announced on www.boaeditions.org later this year.
Hugh Martin is a veteran of the Iraq war and a graduate of Muskingum University. His chapbook, So, How Was The War? (Kent State UP, 2010) was published by the Wick Poetry Center. He is finishing his MFA at Arizona State and will be a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in the fall of 2012.
Cornelius Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets. His numerous awards include an NEA Fellowship in Literature and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. He is the author of several books of poetry including the critically acclaimed Hardheaded Weather (Penguin, 2008), which has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He currently holds the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Congratulations, Hugh! Many thanks to Cornelius Eady for serving as final judge for the competition and to all the poets who submitted their manuscripts!
