The Hollis Summers Poetry Prize
Named after the distinguished poet who taught for many years at Ohio University and made Athens, Ohio, the subject of many of his poems, this competition invites writers to submit unpublished collections of original poems.
The competition is open to both those who have not published a book-length collection and those who have.
For more information, visit our Hollis Summers Poetry Prize Facebook page. Become a friend and see our list of prize-winning poets, final judges, and links to books.
Submission Period
Manuscripts must be postmarked by October 31 November 15 (deadline extended). Those postmarked later will be returned unread.
Format
Manuscripts of 60 to 95 pages should be typed on standard sized paper or be a clean photocopy. Do not send your only copy. Name, address, and phone number should appear on the title page. Acknowledgments should appear on a separate page. Individual collections must be the work of a single author. Translations are not accepted. Manuscripts should be submitted in final form; revisions or emendations to acknowledgments will not be considered during the contest. Multiple submissions to other publishers are acceptable provided we are informed if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere. The manuscript should be submitted in a plain 9 × 11½" manila folder. Please do not submit manuscripts bound in ring binders or plastic holders.
Return of Manuscripts
Because we cannot guarantee the return of the manuscripts, all entries become the property of Ohio University Press and those not chosen will be recycled. Do not include a self-addressed stamped envelope. We will notify all contestants by email following the final selection. Please include your email address in your submission package.
Entry Fee
Submissions should include a check for $25 made out to Ohio University Press to help defray administrative costs.
Judging
The final judge for the competition will be named when the winner is announced in April. Individual criticism of manuscripts cannot be given.
Prize
The winning manuscript will be published by Ohio University Press the following year and will be awarded a cash prize of $1000.
Manuscript Submission
Send all materials to:
Hollis Summers Poetry PrizeOhio University Press
19 Circle Drive
The Ridges
Athens, OH 45701
Nick Norwood
2011
Stephen Kampa
2010
Will Wells
2009
Jason Gray
2008
Roger Sedarat
2007
Ann Hudson
2006
Jennifer Rose
2005
Joshua Mehigan
2004
Dan Lechay
2003
Robert B. Shaw
2002
Kwame Dawes
2000
Meredith Carson
1997
Hollis Summers Poetry Prize Winners 1997-2005
Poetry Prize Winners
South × South
Poems from Antarctica
By Charles HoodA vivid and insightful look at the culture and terrain of Antarctica, as well as the people who choose to live and work there, South × South celebrates and explores life at the extreme edge of our planet.…
Gravel and Hawk
Poems
By Nick NorwoodGravel and Hawk dwells on the physical and cultural landscapes of the Texarkana border region, an area of stark natural beauty and even starker manifestations of its human habitation: oil derricks and pump jacks, logging trucks, chicken houses, come-to-Jesus billboards, and greasy catfish joints, a patchwork of dying farm towns and ragtag municipalities laced together by county roads, state highways, and that treacherous, rust-hued slurry known as the Red River.…
Cracks in the Invisible
Poems
By Stephen KampaStephen Kampa’s poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God.…
Unsettled Accounts
Poems
By Will WellsTo take the mess of life and make meaning from it is what all poets seek to do. For Will Wells, recipient of the thirteenth annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, this includes reaching across centuries and continents, into the minds and hearts of disparate individuals—Albert Einstein, Andrea Yates, the traveler from Porlock, Dante, or Holocaust survivors, including his own grandmother—to extract the personal value embedded there for him.…
Photographing Eden
Poems
By Jason GrayPhotographing Eden presents the first full-length collection of poems by a major new talent. The work meditates on several ideas, the crux of which is Eden: spirituality, environmentalism, and the relationships between men and women.…
Dear Regime
Letters to the Islamic Republic
By Roger SedaratIn his provocative, brave, and sometimes brutal first book of poems, Roger Sedarat directly addresses the possibility of political change in a nation that some in America consider part of “the axis of evil.…
The Armillary Sphere
Poems
By Ann HudsonTaking the warp of dream, sometimes nightmare, and weaving it with the ordinary world, the poems of The Armillary Sphere, Ann Hudson's award-winning debut collection, do not simplify the mystery but deepen it.…
Hometown for an Hour
Poems
By Jennifer RoseIn her second collection of poems, Jennifer Rose writes primarily of places and displacement. Using the postcard’s conventions of brevity, immediacy, and, in some instances, humor, these poems are greetings from destinations as disparate as Cape Cod, Kentuckiana, and Croatia.…
The Optimist
Poems
By Joshua MehiganIn Joshua Mehigan’s award-winning poetry, one encounters a lucid, resolute vision driven by an amazing facility with the metrical line. Most of the poems in The Optimist unapologetically employ traditional poetic technique, and, in each of these, Mehigan stretches the fabric of living language over a framework of regular meter to produce a compelling sonic counterpoint.…
The Quarry
Poems
By Dan LechayMarvelous, disquieting, extraordinarily beautiful book that meditates on fundamental questions of time and change in and through a clear-eyed yet loving evocation of everyday existence. Once or twice in a generation a poet comes along who captures the essential spirit of the American Midwest and gives name to the peculiar nature that persists there.…
Solving For X
Poems
By Robert B. ShawIn Solving for X, his award-winning collection of new poems, Robert B. Shaw probes the familiar and encounters the unexpected; in the apparently random he discerns a hidden order. Throughout, Shaw ponders the human frailties and strengths that continue to characterize us, with glances at the stresses of these millennial times that now test our mettle and jar our complacency.…
The Palace of Bones
By Allison Eir JenksThe Palace of Bones by Allison Eir Jenks is an often stark and startling vision of the way we live, the places we inhabit, and the relics we make to comfort ourselves. Haunted by a quiet, unquenchable longing, Jenks expertly and calmly guides the reader through a vivid dreamscape in this first full-length collection of poems.…
Midland
Poems
By Kwame DawesThe winning manuscript of the fourth annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize is also the exciting American debut by a poet who has already established himself as an important international poetic voice. Midland, the seventh collection by Kwame Dawes, draws deeply on the poet's travels and experiences in Africa, the Caribbean, England, and the American South.…
Nostos
By V. Penelope PelizzonIn choosing the winning manuscript for the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, judge Andrew Hudgins remarked: “With immense poetic verve, Pelizzon finds flamboyance in places where it has been forgotten and brings it back to vivid life--and she sees it for what it is.…
The Watchers
By Memye Curtis TuckerIn the world of Memye Curtis Tucker's poetry, the observed are on display, on trial, on guard, or disappearing, and often changed by the eyes upon them; the gazers are benevolent, threatening, judgmental, separate, invisible.…
Infinite Morning
Poems
By Meredith CarsonAbout the author of this award-winning collection, final judge Miller Williams commented: “Meredith Carson writes poems so well-controlled in tone that the language of conversation takes on an elegance rarely found in contemporary poetry, but emphatically contemporary.…
