Hood, Lantz, and Vollmer win the Felix Pollak, Brittingham, and Four Lakes Prizes
Charles Hood, Nick Lantz, and Judith Vollmer have been named winners of the annual poetry contests administered by the Creative Writing Program of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Wisconsin Press.
All three prize-winning books will be published in early 2017 by the University of Wisconsin Press, as part of the Wisconsin Poetry Series edited by Ronald Wallace.
The Brittingham Prize, conferred annually since 1985, and the Felix Pollak Prize, founded in 1994, are awarded to book-length manuscripts of original poetry submitted in an open competition. Each year, a nationally recognized poet chooses the winners. This year’s judge was Susan Mitchell, author of Rapture and Erotikon, winner of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim, and holder of the Mary Blossom Lee Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Florida Atlantic University. The Four Lakes Prize, begun in 2011, is awarded to a new book of poetry submitted by a past winner of the Brittingham or Pollak competitions, selected by an editorial board at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Charles Hood
Charles Hood is the recipient of this year’s Felix Pollak Prize. A professor of English at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, California, Hood earned his MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine. His forthcoming collection, Partially Excited States, is praised by Mitchell as “simultaneously gorgeous, playful, witty, goofy, hilarious, and profound.” She calls it “a brilliant book that encompasses what it is to be human,” and adds that “its poems have all the exuberance and excitement of creation.” Hood’s previous poetry books include South x South and several small press collections and chapbooks.
Nick Lantz
Winner of the Brittingham Prize, Nick Lantz is a past recipient of the Felix Pollak prize for his work The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbor’s House. His new volume, You, Beast, will be his fourth book of poetry. Mitchell calls it a “masterful and deeply moving collection that raises political and social questions urging us toward a new world where humans, animals, plants—even the cockroach—are worthy of respect.” Lantz is an assistant professor of English at Sam Houston State University and received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Judith Vollmer
Judith Vollmer was awarded the Four Lakes Prize for her manuscript The Apollonia Poems.
She previously won the Brittingham Prize for her collection Level Green, and her book Reactor was also published by the University of Wisconsin Press. She is professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and teaches in the low residency MFA Program at Drew University. The Appollonia Poems, the author’s sixth volume of poetry, has been praised by Alicia Ostriker, who observed, “this book is a trip, or many trips. Here is the creative mind at work and play—its geological layers uncovered, lifetimes and cultures revisited.” She describes Vollmer’s voice as “curious, tender, and flinty, with its own grave and ethereal music.”