Previous Winners

Ray Amorosi, final judge for the 2011 Idaho Prize for Poetry, has declared California poet, J.T. Ledbetter’s OLD AND LOST RIVERS this year’s prize winner. Mr. Ledbetter will receive $1000 plus publication by Lost Horse Press. OLD AND LOST RIVERS will be released in Spring 2012.

WINNER of 2011 Idaho Prize for Poetry

J.T. Ledbetter OLD AND LOST RIVERS

FINALISTS

Joe Wilkins NOTES FROM THE JOURNEY WESTWARD
Katie Kingston WHAT DOES LORCA OWN?

THE LONG LIST

• Evolution Of The Genus Iris, Robert Michael Pyle
• The Alp At The End Of The Street, Gary Leising
• Nemesis, Melanie Willette
• The Pomegranate, Sister Of The Heart, Carlos Reyes
• Praise Nothing, Joshua Robbins
• Be Seeing You, Empire, Stephen Danos
• Oils And Salts, Niki Leopold
• Variations On A Domestic Theme, Anna Lowe Weber
• Sorry Motel, Amy Miller
• In The Sadness Museum, Susan Thomas
• Borrowed Tales, Deborah Woodard
• Self-Deliverance, William Greenway
• To Stave Off Disaster, Sarah Sousa
• The Hand Of Burning Prayers, Kirun Kapur

We heartily thank all the poets who submitted their work to the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2012.

2010 Winner

Oyster Perpetual, by Austin LaGrone

The final judge for the 2010 Idaho Prize for Poetry was Thomas Lux.

Short List & Finalists of the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• Rust Fish, Maya Jewell Zeller (Spokane, WA)
• Between Their Bodies, A Space, Kasey Jueds (Philadelphia, PA)
• The History of Permanence, Gary Finke (Selinsgrove, PA)
• Flight, Corrine Clegg Hales (Fresno, CA)
• The Eiger and Other Walls, Stanley Radhuber (Aubignan, France)
• Miracle Atlas, Jay Leeming (Ithaca, NY)
• The One and Only Flamming World, David James (Linden, MI)
• Letter from Paradise, Mary Ann McFadden (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico)
• The Natural Order of Things, Cathy Carlisi (Atlanta, GA)
• Children of Interrogation, Martin Ott (Los Angeles, CA)
• As If Returning Home, Jarita Davis (Falmouth, MA)
• Surrounded by Owls, James McKean (Iowa City, IA)
• Magdelana’s Passage, Jennifer Foerster (San Francisco, CA)
• Mosslight, Kimberley Pittman-Schultz (Fieldbrook, CA)
• Horses in the Cathedral, Kimberly Burwick (Moscow, ID)
• Girls on Land, Nicole Melanson (Reading, MA)
• Freak Show, Valerie Bandura (Gilbert, AZ)
• Voodoo Inverso, Mark Wagenaar (Charlottesville, VA)

2009 Winner

Frescoes, poems by Stephen Gibson

“In Frescoes, Stephen Gibson assumes the charge of the engaged tourist, paying his entry fee to the chapels and basilicas of Renaissance Florence and Padua and Rome in order to enter in to much more subversive premises: to see through the pigmented plaster and marble facades to the real-life consequences of original sin and human depravity depicted in these treasures of High Art. Gibson is a wised-up pilgrim in sanctuaries whose faith he cannot share.

“Harsh and highly accomplished, these poems redeem the people from the paint, plaster and piety. They pull victims and perpetrators alike out of the history and myth of the treasures of Great Arts into the arena of our ongoing moral dilemmas, our struggles for survival as well as for the preservation of compassion and decency in a perennially fallen human world.”

—Carolyne Wright, from the judge’s introduction

Short List & Finalists of the 2009 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• Thunder Shakes the Snake: The Poetry of Cheng Hui by John Brady
• Every Possible Blue by Matthew Thorburn
• Fur Traders on the Missouri by John Bensko
• little lung damage by Esther Lee
• We Are the Bus by Jim McKean
• Animal Kingdom by Peter Munro
• Radioactive City by Richard Robbins
• Still-Life Breathing by Catherine Staples
• Ragged Point Road by Joe Wilkins
• Rust Fish by Maya Jewell Zeller

2008 Winner

Lucifer, a Hagiography, a poem by Philip Memmer

“Lucifer is on a non-linear trajectory, revolving its readers through the profane and the pious swinging door of heaven and earth. Memmer’s collection, with a few pitches and an unexpected saint we can all root for, has the power to provoke, enlighten and unsettle. The paradox remains the same—so much is at stake in these poems, and so little—but Memmer has managed to give us an original and remarkable passageway.”

–M.L. Smoker, Final Judge for the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry

Short List & Finalists of the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• Troubled Tongues by Crystal Williams
• Boys Whistling Like Canaries by Jorn Ake
• Kurosawa’s Dog by Dennis Hinrichsen
• The Natural Order of Things by Cathy Carlisi
• The Chapel of Each Day by Tim Skeen
• Beautiful in the Mouth by Keetje Kuipers
• Egoli Exhaustress by Matthew Gavin Frank
• Dear Weather Ghost by Melissa Ginsburg
• Basin and Plateau by Ian Harris
• The Promise of a Field by Jessica Grant Bundschuh
• Labor in Vain by Landon Godfrey
• Lantern Puzzle by Ye Chun
• The Empty Notebook by Susan Thomas
• Catch Light by Sarah O’Brien
• Folly by David Axelrod
• Radioactive City by Richard Robbins

2007 Winner

Friendly Fire, poems by Katrina Roberts

Friendly Fire, Katrina Roberts’ cycle of fifty-two sonnets, proves the durability and flexibility of the lyric today. A taut narrative scaffolding supports Roberts’ brief, searing meditations on family, farm labor, friendship, illness, parenting. Colloquial language lends verve. Literal images evoke the texture of farm life. Roberts explores abstraction (“Forgiveness”) with apt metaphor: “I shelter the grudge, build / a rustic cabin for it in my chest, pound rusty nails / in to anchor a porch where I sit glaring.” At the close of “Malignant,” the narrator asks a timeless question: “what lies in wait for us?” Read Friendly Fire for Roberts’ sensual and wise rendering of the here and now.

–Robin Becker, Final Judge for the 2007 Idaho Prize for Poetry

Short List & Finalists of the 2007 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• Past Eden by Alice Templeton
• The Brother Swimming Beneath Me by Brent Goodman
• Self-Evident by Scott Hightower
• Reflections in Blu by Carolyne Wright
• Hyssop by Susanna Chidress
• Accidental Music By Anne Pitkin
• Peacetime by Tim Skeen
• Fugitive Dust by Kathleen Winter
• The Natural Order of Things by Cathy Carlisi
• Afraid the Future Burns by James Grabill
• Nowhere by W. T. Pfefferle
• Nervous Arrangement of Words Play House by Carol Guess
• Stay by Kathleen McGookey
• Hold Everything Down by William Notter
• The Stones We Bring With Us by Carlos Reyes

2006 Winner

Retreats and Recognitions, poems by Grace Bauer

“All one has to do is read “Note From the Imaginary Daughter,” the first poem in Grace Bauer’s Retreats and Recognitions, and you’ll be caught in the grip of psychological drama and an evocative imagination that will make you want to read further. Bauer’s poems probe the dark landscapes between impression and apprehension, the past and its repetition though imaginative transformation, impulse and restraint. Her delivery is tough and terse; her imagery is fresh and often startling. There is experience and authority in her voice. She can be immensely witty, as in “Plot Lines,” where she improvises on the word, tale, or virtuoso as in her intricate sestina, “A Little Like Dorothy.” Succinct, like “Awakened By the Fall,” and evocative, like “Lunacy.” Her poems are poignant, intelligent, and believable. Poetry lovers, read this book!”

—Robert Pack, Final Judge for the 2006 Idaho Prize for Poetry

Short List & Finalists of the 2006 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• No Sweeter Fat by Nancy Pagh
• Union by Emily Raabe
• Holding Time by Robert Carl Williams
• Woman, Money, Watch, Gun by Carolyne Wright

2005 Winner

Thistle, poems by Melissa Kwasny

Final Judge 2005, Christopher Howell

Short List & Finalists of the 2005 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• Landscape With Silos by Deborah Bogen
• Instrumental Gods by Matt Donovan
• Variations in the Key of Night by Stan Rubin
• Other Americas by Richard Robbins
• Sudden Anthem by Matthew Guenette
• The Blue Cottage by James Brasfield
• Hope by Judith Hemschmeyer
• Difficult Beauties by Janet Wondra
• So Many People Couldn’t Be Wrong by Laurie Blauner
• Heat Lightning by Judith Skilman
• This Brief Earth by Bern Mulvey

2004 Winner

Hurry Back, poems by Alvin Greenberg

Final Judge 2004, Marvin Bell

Short List & Finalists of the 2004 Idaho Prize for Poetry

• Landscape with Silos by Deborah Bogen
• The Devil’s Calligraphy by Matt Yurdana
• American Common Prayers by Robert Brian Strong
• These Blue Rooms by Laura Read
• The Untested Hand by Richard Robbins
• The School of Weeping by Jennifer Maier
• Mister Five-by-Five by Philip Dacey
• The Last Days of Elvis by D. James Smith
• A Change of Maps by Carolyne Wright