BWe are pleased to announce that the winner of the first The most important The poetry prize goes to Josiah AR Cox for his poem “Two Owls”. Amit Majmudar, one of the judges of this competition, described it as a “sonically and symbolically” rich poem that explores both “predatory sight and visionary insight” in the figure of owls in the night.
Cox is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. He received a MAR from Yale Divinity School and an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Smart pace, Literary Affairs, Common good, Christianity and Literatureand elsewhere.
Ryan Wilson won second prize for his personal and metaphysical sonnet “Gather Ye.” Wilson is the author of two volumes of poetry and a collection of translations. He teaches creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and was, until recently, editor-in-chief of Literary AffairsHe earned an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded the Sankey Prize for Poetry. He also holds a master’s degree from Boston University, where he was awarded the Schmuel Traum Prize for Translation.
Both poems appear in the October issue of The most important and receive prizes of $2,000 and $1,000 respectively. Over 1,000 poems were submitted by 587 participants. This was a blind competition judged by Majmudar, myself and The most important Editor RR Reno.
The The most important The Poetry Prize is an annual award for a formally completed poem of up to forty lines. The magazine has long been devoted to poetry and has featured some of the most significant poets of the past thirty years in its pages, including Les Murray, Richard Wilbur, Rhina P. Espaillat, Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, AE Stallings, Rachel Hadas, Christian Wiman and many others. Grace notesan anthology of The most important Poetry, was published in 2010 and an annual poetry reading began in 2015. We are delighted to continue this commitment to the art of poetry with a new award, thanks to the generous support of the Tim & Judy Rudderow Foundation.
Micah Mattix is poetry editor at The most important and Professor of English at Regent University.
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Image by Jean-François Millet, provided by Wikimedia Commons, licensed through the Public Domain. Image cropped.
