FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – James Hall’s poetry collection Now You’re the Enemy, published in theUniversity of Arkansas Press’s Poetry Series in 2008 (paper $16), has been receiving quite a bit of attention recently.

It was just announced that the book has won the 2009 Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry. The award is given out by the Texas Institute of Letters. ForeWord Magazine recently announced its finalists for Best Books of the Year, and Hall’s collection was chosen for the poetry category.

The Lambda Literary Foundation has also announced its finalists for its annual literary awards. Hall’s book was chosen as one of five finalists in the foundation’s Gay Poetry category. The Lambda Literary Foundation will announce the winners on May 28.

Finally, the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center has just announced that Hall was been selected to receive its annual Fieries and Snuffies Residency for Emerging Writers. The residency is given to poets who have only published one full-length collection. Hall will spend one month from early June to early July as a guest of the center and will stay for free at the center’s studio apartment for writers located next door to the center’s library.

Published in the press’s distinguished Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer and published in the spring of 2008, Hall’s book was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Book Award and a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard/Open Competition Book Award. It has received many excellent reviews, to go along with the awards and nominations. Library Journal described it as a “collection of powerful poems ... highly recommended.” The Poetry Foundation’s Web site described it as “stunningly candid, ... an impressive and exceptional debut.” National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty, whose latest poetry collection is also a finalist in the Lambda Literary Awards competition, says that “Hall’s poems are psychically charged, nervy, both measured and fevered, compassionate and outrageous, and alive to the very core.”

James Allen Hall is assistant professor of English and communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam.