Press Publishes Winner, Two Finalists in Inaugural Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize

Matthew Walsh, his winning collection of poems, The Dirt Riddles.

The Dirt Riddles by Michael Walsh

Pamela Gemin, her book of poems, Another Creature, was a finalist.

Another Creature: Poems by Pamela Gemin

Eric Leigh, his poetry, Harm’s Way, was also a finalist.

Harm's Way by Eric Leigh

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The first winning entry of the $5,000 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize is now available. Poetry Series editor and judge Enid Shomer picked Michael Walsh’s The Dirt Riddles (paperback $16.00) as the best collection out of the more than 700 submissions the press received. In addition to his $5,000 prize, Walsh will also be a featured reader on April 20 at the Arkansas Festival of Writers, sponsored by the university’s programs in creative writing and translation.

Eric Leigh’s collection Harm’s Way (paperback $16.00) and Pamela Gemin’s Another Creature (paperback $16.00) were finalists.

Shomer describes Walsh’s “powerful first collection” as being “literally rooted in the earth and in the world of animal husbandry. You can taste these poems about life on a family dairy farm in your mouth. These lyric poems produce a music in which meaning is so perfectly fused to sound that we feel the words as we read.”

Walsh is the author of one chapbook, Adam Walking the Garden, and he lives in Minneapolis, Minn.

Walsh's book, The Dirt Riddles, is available at the University of Arkansas Bookstore, among other outlets.

The expansive poems in Wisconsin poet Pamela Gemin’s Another Creature follow a woman through both her mistaken and wise ways. Poet David Wojahn describes the poems as “quietly ferocious.” They remind “us again and again of the essential strangeness that lies within the domestic.” Poet Betsy Sholl says that “Gemin’s voice is bold and nuanced, her art supple and sure. She moves with utter grace through a soundtrack of adolescence into the music of midlife with its subtle complications, and she gives us a beatific vision of ourselves.”

Gemin teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and is the author of one other collection, Vendettas, Charms, and Prayers, and the editor of three poetry anthologies.

In the words of poet Grace Schulman, “Eric Leigh writes of loss in poems that are deeply moving and yet unsentimental. Reading his first collection, Harm’s Way, I’m struck by his intensity and eloquence. He has the charm of a storyteller with a wide range of settings.” And poet Linda Gregerson says that “I know of no writer whose vision is more generous, more inclusive than that of Eric Leigh.”

Leigh has won a number of awards, including a “Discovery”/The Nation Prize. He lives in San Francisco.

The University of Arkansas Press has been publishing poetry ever since Miller Williams became the press’s first director 30 years ago. After his retirement from the press, poet Enid Shomer became the editor of the Poetry Series. But the press had never had a monetary prize for its poetry. Thanks to a benefit concert by Lucinda Williams and help from the university, the press was able to create an endowment that made the annual prize possible. The university’s creative writing and translation program then added to the prize by agreeing to invite each winner to be a featured poet at their annual festival.