Lois Morrell and John Russell Hayes Poetry Awards

2019 Awards
judged by poet Thomas Devaney

Lois Morrel Award (1^st place)

Renn Tan '20, for the idiot’s guide to worshipping your ancestors

Thomas Devaney particularly praised the poem for “undermining expectations, swerving away from false sentimentality, the equal impact of song and a voice speaking” and also emphasized its “alchemical blend: worlds and histories simultaneously there in the lines and the words as physical as the gestures they carry.”

John Russel Hayes Awards:

(2nd place) Paul Buchanan '21, for Awake for Icarus

Thomas Devaney said of this work, “every line is a gesture: some hard hitting, some vulnerable, some resilient.” He was struck by the poems’ “cycles of violence of brown and black bodies, interludes, longing, beauty.”

(3rd place) Maya Kikuchi '20, for translation of Hirata Toshiko’s Lovely Staples

Thomas Devaney emphasized the ease of this translation, where every word and phrase seems comfortably at home as if simply articulated, not translated.

2018 Awards

Lois Morrel Award (1^st place)

Yi Wei '21, for Shaving

John Russel Hayes Awards:

(2^nd place) Paul Buchanan '21, for little deaths

(2^nd place) Moses Rubin '19 ,for The Hafele-Keating Experiment

(3^rd place) Ozsu Risvanoglu '20, for translations from the Turkish of Turgut Uyar’s The Night of Deers and Asylum

Lines of note from other submitted poems in 2018

Lois Morrell and John Russell Hayes Poetry Awards

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