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Arthur Smith Poetry Prize – Winners

The Parting Glass by Lisa Parker

Winner of The 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Look for it September 2022

Jesse Graves, the judge for the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize, said:

“… moving and memorable in terms of subject matter… accomplished in form and technique. The individual poems are brilliantly expressed, and they add up to sustained and coherent whole. The poet … captures the experiences living [in Appalachia] and moving away and the feelings about the language, beautifully.”

Lisa Parker is a native Virginian, a poet, musician, and photographer. Her book, This Gone Place, won the 2010 Appalachian Studies Association Weatherford Award and her work is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her photography has been on exhibit in NYC and published in several arts journals and anthologies.

Splinter by Susan O’Dell Underwood

Finalist for the 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Look for it May 2023

Jesse Graves, the judge for the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize said:

“These poems are wise and generous throughout, and witty at times to provide a balance to the elegiac tone.”

Susan O'Dell Underwood is a native of East Tennessee, where she has lived most of her life. She's the director of creative writing at Carson-Newman University. Besides two chapbooks, she has one full-length collection of poetry, The Book of Awe (Iris, 2018). Her novel Genesis Road is forthcoming from Madville Publishing (June 2022). Her poems and fiction are published and forthcoming in a variety of journals and anthologies, including A Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Oxford American, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Still: The Journal.