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.

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.

Reviews and excerpts

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.

From GUINEVERE IN BALTIMORE © 2013 by Shelley Puhak, published by The Waywiser Press. Used with permission.