Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize: Shelley Puhak (2013)

The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series co-sponsored the presentation of the award in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre with The Waywiser Press on November 18, 2013. Shelley Puhak, the 2012 recipient, read with prize judge Charles Simic, introduced by Joesph Harrison, poet and Senior American Editor of The Waywiser Press.

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

Shelley Puhak

Shelley Puhak is an Assistant Professor at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore. She is the author of Stalin in Aruba, which won the 2010 Towson Prize for Literature, and The Consolation of Fairy Tales, which won Split Oak Press’s 2011 Stephen Dunn Prize. Charles Simic selected her second collection of poetry, Guinevere in Baltimore, as this year’s Hecht Prize winner.

Charles Simic

Charles Simic’s work resists categorization and is often haunting, sly, mysterious, and always engaging. Simic is a poet, essayist, and translator. He has written 20 books of poetry, seven books of essays, a memoir, and numerous books of translations of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian poetry. He has received many literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. Simic was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2007-08.

Reviews and excerpts

“Simic is a master of the absurd and the unexpected.” —Publishers Weekly on The World Doesn't End

From Lancelot, Prone

I’m prone to rashes and overreactions.

I’m liable to send forth flares to silence

small lights below, my fire seeking

its own level, as water might. O Reader,

so far off, you flicker.

But you’ll do.