We’re pleased to announce the following $10,000 Rattle Poetry Prize winner:

“Stroke”
Matthew Dickman
London, United Kingdom

Matthew Dickman was raised by his mother in the Lents neighborhood of Southeast Portland along with his sister Elizabeth and twin brother, the poet Michael Dickman. After studying at Portland Community College and the University of Oregon, he earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center. He was the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Book Award and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. Dickman is the author of three full length collections, All American Poem, which won the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry, Mayakovsky’s Revolver (W.W. Norton & Co, 2012), and Wonderland (W.W. Norton & Co, 2017).Currently, Matthew teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low-residency MFA program and writes advertisements for a living. He lives in London, United Kingdom, with his partner and two children. (web)

Finalists:

Note: After subscriber vote, James Davis May was selected as winner of the Readers’ Choice Award. For more information and the full results, click here.

“Punch Line”
Kathleen Balma
New Orleans, LA

“Bonanza”
Susan Browne
Oakland, CA

“Mother and Child”
Barbara Crane
Somerville, MA

“Foreign-ness”
Maya Tevet Dayan
Hod Hasharon, Israel

“Cathedrals: Ode to a Deported Uncle”
Daniel Arias Gómez
Fresno, CA

“The Never-Ending Serial”
Red Hawk
Monticello, AR

“Gender Studies”
Sue Howell
Durham, NC

“From Oblivious Waters”
Kimberly Kemler
Baltimore, MD

“Red in Tooth and Claw”
James May
Macon, GA

“Self-Portrait, Despite What They Say”
Gabrielle Otero
Astoria, NY

These eleven poems will published in issue #66 of Rattle. Each of the Finalists are also eligible for the $2,000 Readers’ Choice Award, selected by subscriber vote in February.

An additional 8 poets were selected for standard publication, and offered a space in the open section of a future issue. These poets have been notified individually about details, but they are: Megan Alyse, Jacqueline Berger, Gregory Loselle, Laura Read, Jennifer Perrine, T.R. Poulson, Yaccaira Salvatierra, and Laura Tanenbaum.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition, which would not have been a success without your diverse and inspiring poems. This felt like the strongest year of entries by a wide margin, and we really enjoyed the opportunity to read. We received 3,606 entries and over 14,000 poems, and it was an honor to read each of them.