The winners have been named and notified for the 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. We hope you will join us in congratulating them.

The 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize Winners

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“All six books [on the shortlist] had strengths, but I kept coming back to these two.”–Jeff Hardin

A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body by David Prather

Winner

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and Bending Light with Bare Hands: A Journal of Poems (Fernwood Press, 2025). His work has appeared in many publications, including New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, The Comstock Review, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. Website: www.davidbprather.com

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My Out-Migrations by Elaine Palencia

First Runner Up

Elaine Fowler Palencia grew up in Morehead, KY, and Cookeville, TN. She is the author of six books of fiction, four poetry chapbooks, and two works of nonfiction. Her most recent book is On Rising Ground: The Life and Civil War Letters of John M. Douthit, 52nd Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Mercer U. Press), about her great-great grandfather. Her work has received eight Pushcart Prize nominations and other prizes. She is the book review editor of Pegasus, journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society, and the longtime moderator of the Red Herring Prose Workshop. Much of her writing is place-based.

Shortlist

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This list of Six titles was selected by our preliminary readers, Karen George and Brian Griffin. And we thank them dearly for their time and attention over the months of submissions.

• When Body Becomes House by Dianna Henning
• Learning to Talk to Birds by Gregory Byrd
• A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body by David Prather (Winner!!!)
• My Out-Migrations by Elaine Palencia (1st Runner Up!!!)
• Holy Nothing by Beth Anstandig
• Bodies of Water by Mary Hawley

Judges for 2025

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Our head judge for 2025 was Jeff Hardin, a long-time friend of Arthur Smith. Jeff made the hard hard decision about which collections should be the “winners.” All three judges said they were truly impressed with the quality of the submissions, which made the decisions really difficult. (Thanks so much to all who submitted!)

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Watermark,  A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being, No Other Kind of World, and Small Revolution. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and the X. J. Kennedy Prize. Originally from Savannah, Tennessee, he has taught for almost three decades at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee.

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Photo: A. J. Holmes

Karen George is author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021), Caught in the Trembling Net (2024), and forthcoming Delight Is a Field. She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her award-winning short story collection, How We Fracture, was released by Minerva Rising Press in 2024. She is the recipient of grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Arts Council. Her poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. Her latest book Caught in the Trembling Net, published by Kelsay Books, was inspired by the art, life, and writings of Frida Kahlo, Georgia, O’Keeffe, and Emily Carr. Her website is https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

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Brian Griffin holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. A former Director of Lifespan Religious Education at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, he has taught at The University of Virginia, The University of Tennessee, and Pellissippi State Community College. His fiction and poetry appears in a number of literary journals, including Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, New Millennium Writings, Asheville Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poems and Plays, Snake Nation Review, Clockwatch Review, New Delta Review, The Distillery, Mixitini Matrix, A Tapestry of Voices: An East Tennessee Anthology, Knoxville Bound, Metro Pulse, Number Inc, and elsewhere. He received the Mary McCarthy Award for Short Fiction for his collection Sparkman in the Sky and Other Stories.  Single Lens Reflex, his collection of poems about surviving a domestic terrorist attack, was a finalist in the 2018 National Poetry Series. It was published in 2024 by Iris Press.