2023 Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award
Deadline: Postmarked by January 31, 2024
Entry fee: $30 (or $20 for members of Arts + Literature Laboratory)
The Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award is given to the best book of poems published by a Wisconsin writer in the contest year. Only works of 48 pages or more of poetry are eligible for the Meudt Poetry Book Award. See full contest guidelines.
- First Place: $1000 award and five-day stay at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, WI ($895 value)
- Honorable Mention: $100 and a five-day stay at Ernest Hüpeden's Painted Forest in Valton, WI ($800 value)
2023 Judge: Gabrielle Bates
Gabrielle Bates is the author of the poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), a New York Times Book Review 'The Shortlist' pick and a Chicago Review of Books 'must-read' book of 2023. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Bates currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, BAX: Best American Experimental Writing, the Between the Covers podcast, and elsewhere, and she has served as visiting faculty for a variety of universities, arts organizations, and museums, including the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops.
About the award's namesake:
Edna Meudt [pronounced MITE] (1906-1989) was born on a farm in Wyoming Valley and lived most of her life on a farm near Dodgeville. She was a teacher, lecturer, editor, and writer who published six books of poetry and two plays. She taught poetry at Rhinelander School of Arts for 18 years and was a co-founder of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, as well as president of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Widely published in magazines, she edited The Country Poet and a series of anthologies, An Upland Reader I, II, and III. Among her books are the much-lauded Round River Canticle, The Ineluctable Sea (which won the National League of American Pen Women prize in 1976), Plain Chant for a Tree, and her autobiography, The Rose Jar (1990).
Previous Winners
2022
First Place: Durable Goods (Véhicule Press/Signal Editions) by James Pollock, Madison, WI
James Pollock’s book Durable Goods made The Miramichi Reader's list of the best poetry books of 2022. Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press, 2012) was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Award, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. His book You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada (The Porcupine's Quill, 2012) was a finalist for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. He also edited The Essential Daryl Hine, which made Partisan magazine's list of the best books of 2015. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, AGNI, and Plume, and have won the Manchester Poetry Prize, the Magma Editors' Prize, and the Guy Owen Prize from Southern Poetry Review. He is Professor of English at Loras College, and lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin.
Honorable Mention: Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife (Holy Cow! Press) by Ingrid Andersson, Madison, WI
Ingrid Andersson’s poems are rooted in life and work as an immigrant farmer’s daughter, a mother, midwife, and poet and reach beyond borders to bridge divides. Her poetry has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, named poem-of-the-day/month, won an Editor’s Choice award, and has appeared in About Place Journal, Ars Medica, Eastern Iowa Review, Literary Mama, Midwest Review, Midwifery Today, Minerva Rising, Plant-Human Quarterly, Torrey House Press, Wisconsin People & Ideas and more. Ingrid’s debut collection, Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife, was published in 2022 by Holy Cow! Press (Duluth). Ingrid holds degrees from University of Wisconsin-Madison in European literature and languages, as well as anthropology and nursing. She is a practicing home birth midwife in Madison, WI.
2021
Hello There (Word Poetry) by Dewitt Clinton
Honorable Mention: Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems by Margaret Rozga, Milwaukee
2020
No award
2019
Copper Yearning (Holy Cow! Press) by Kimberly Blaeser, Burlington
Honorable Mention: The Only Home We Know (Tebot Bach)
by Robin Chapman, Madison
2018
The Arrows That Choose Us (Press 53)
, Marilyn Annucci, Madison
Honorable Mention: Palominos Near Tuba City: New and Selected Poems (Holy Cow! Press)
by Denise Sweet, Green Bay
2017
Vasectomania (University of Akron Press) by Matthew Guenette, Madison
Honorable Mention: Now/Here (Holy Cow! Press) by Crystal Spring Gibbins, Washburn
2016
Bloodroot (Settlement House Books) by Catherine Jagoe, Madison
Honorable Mention: The Mansion of Happiness (Oberlin College Press)
by Jon Loomis, Eau Claire
2014
The Night We’re Not Sleeping In (Sarabande Books
) by Sean Bishop, Madison
Honorable Mention: The Sleeve Waves (University of Wisconsin Press)
by Angela Sorby, Milwaukee
2013
Darktown Follies (Tupelo Press)
by Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Madison
Honorable Mention: Thievery (University of Akron Press) by Seth Abramson, Madison
2012
Somewhere Piano (Mayapple Press) by Sarah Busse, Madison
Honorable Mention: Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press) by James Pollock, Madison
2011
I Am Not a Pioneer (H_NGM_N Books)
by Adam Fell, Madison
Honorable Mention: the eelgrass meadow (Tebot Bach) by Robin Chapman, Madison
2010
We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (Graywolf Press)
by Nick Lantz, Madison
Honorable Mention: The Flight Cage (Tupelo Press)
by Rebecca Dunham, Bayside
2009
Cinema Muto (Southern Illinois University Press)
by Jesse Lee Kercheval, Madison
Honorable Mention: Bird Skin Coat (University of Wisconsin Press) by Angela Sorby, Milwaukee
2008
For a Limited Time Only (University of Pittsburgh Press) by Ron Wallace, Madison
Honorable Mention: The House of Marriage (Louisiana State University Press)
by Erin Hanusa, Madison
2007
Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems (The University of Georgia Press)
by Paul Zimmer, Soldiers Grove
Honorable Mention: Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press)
by Susan Elbe, Madison
2006
Men in the Nude in Socks and Other Poems (Fireweed Press) by Richard Swanson, Madison
2005
Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos (World Scientific) by Robin Chapman, Madison
Honorable Mention: Mead: Twenty-Six Abecedariuns (Marsh River Editions)
by Karl Elder, Howards Grove
Honorable Mention: Far from the Temple of Heaven (Black Moss Press) by Dale Ritterbusch, Waukesha
2004
A Blessing of Trees (Cross+Roads Press) by Alice D’Alessio, Madison,
Honorable Mention: Subject to Change (David Robert Books)
by Marilyn Taylor, Milwaukee
Honorable Mention: The Promised Land (Parallel Press)
by Harriet Brown, Madison
2003
Long for This World (University of Pittsburgh Press)
by Ronald Wallace, Madison
Honorable Mention: Something Near the Dance Floor (Marsh River Editions)
by Bruce Dethlefsen, Westfield
2002
Greatplains: A Prairie Lovesong (Red Dragonfly Press) by David Steingass, Madison
Honorable Mention: The Laugh We Make When We Fall (The Backwaters Press)
by Susan Firer, Milwaukee
2001
The Mean Days (Tia Chua Press)
by Anne-Marie Cusac, Madison
2000
Water Becomes Bone (Western Michigan University)
by C. Mikal Oness, La Crosse
1999
The Way In
(Small Press Distribution) by Robin Chapman, Madison
1998
Never Far from Water
by Rusty McKenzie
1997
Songs for Discharming
by Denise Sweet, Green Bay
1996
The Inardo Poems by John Judson
1995
Lessons Learned
by Dale Ritterbusch, Waukesha
1994
Collected Poems
by James Liddy
1993
The Lives of the Saints and Everything
by Susan Firer
1992
Hidden Seed
by Laura Mills
1991
The Makings of Happiness
by Ronald Wallace, Madison
1990
unknown
1989
The Open Road
by Donald Kummings
1988
Natural Theology by Kelly Cherry, Madison
1987
People and Dog in the Sun
by Ronald Wallace, Madison
1986
Country of Air
by Richard Jones
1985
New Year’s Eve in Whiting, IN
by James Hazard
1984
Star Quilt by Roberta Hill Whiteman
1983
Tunes for Bears to Dance To
by Ronald Wallace, Madison
1982
Poaching for Ivory in Red Africa
by Reinhold Kaebitzsch, Madison
1981
Wilderness Fires
by Peter Stambler
1980
Goldilocks in Later Life
by R.M. Ryan
1979
No Hiding Place
by Warren Woessner
1978
Subject to Change by Felix Pollak
1977
Installing the Bees by Ronald Wallace, Madison
1976
Routes From the Onion’s Dark
by John Judson
1975
Near the Bone
by Doug Flaherty
1974
Country Western Breakdown
by Kathy Weigener
1973
Gingko
by Felix Pollak
1972
The Glass Partition
by Scott Poulter
1971
Letters from Siberia by Roger Mitchell
1970
Within Seasons
by John Judson
1969
The End of Nature
by Chad Walsh
1968
Offshore Water Fisherman
by Raymond Vils
1967
Collected Poems
by August Derleth
1966
no award
1965
Unknown Dance/Psalm of Christ by Chad Walsh
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