Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize: Sir Andrew Motion and Christopher Cessac (2018)

The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series, co-sponsored by The Waywiser Press, presented the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize: Sir Andrew Motion and Christopher Cessac on November 05, 2018 at 7:30pm in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre. The poets were introduced by Phillip Hoy, editor-in-chief of The Waywiser Press.

The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, created in honor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anthony Hecht, is awarded annually by The Waywiser Press for a poetry collection by a poet who has published no more than one previous book of verse. It includes publication with a $3,000 prize.

Sir Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion.

Sir Andrew Motion, prize judge, is the author of several poetry collections, including Coming in to Land: Selected Poems 1975-2015, The Customs House, and Public Property. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and knighted in 1999, Motion has served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

Motion has read for the O.B. Hardison Poetry series previously on May 5, 2016.

Christopher Cessac

Christopher Cessac.

Christopher Cessac is the winner of the 13th Hecht Poetry Prize with his book The Youngest Ocean. His other collections include Republic Sublime, which won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook Eros Among the Americans.

Reviews and excerpts

From "Poetics in the Suburban"

Parked. Idling. Oblivious to the weather

or whether the crops are in, what the factories

are paying, when the troops are returning. Aristotle

would understand. These moments are hard won

and fragile. A little selfish space to dwell

on the precious—iambs (a life?), the introduction

of scenery (this parking lot?), the difference

between Comedy and Tragedy…