University of North Texas 
The Academy of Poets, as part of their Academy Book Awards, sponsors the University and College Poetry Prize Program to distribute annual prizes at over 200 colleges and universities nationwide. The program is notable for having recognized many of America's premier poetic voices during their college years, including Diane Ackerman, Alice Fulton, Tess Gallagher, Allen Grossman, Kimiko Hahn, Robert Hass, Brad Leithauser, J.D. McClatchy, Heather McHugh, and Gregory Orr, among others. Academy of American Poets website: https://poets.org/academy-american-poets/prizes/university-college-poetr...
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2022 Voertman / Academy of American Poets Prize
Minadora Macheret
Valzhyna Mort has selected "Remembering the End of the World" by Minadora Macheret as the winner of the 2022 Voertman / Academy of American Poets Prize.
Mort writes:
In "Remembering the End of the World," the familiar, written-about history of Holocaust is turned strange again: I'm frightened anew by the crow-car, by the dew magnifying the tracks of death, by the ash that tastes of bees and roses. Anew, I'm grateful for poetry for the crow-car, for the dew magnifying the tracks of death, for the ash that tastes of bees and roses. The poet's imagination is at once ironic and tragic. The repetitions haunt and sustain. The final stanza takes one's breath away as it moves from the lips reciting a prayer to the lips pressed to the temple, but instead of a kiss, we hear a shot. The poem's torn, yet dynamic form contains a fable, a gentle way of speaking about the unspeakable.
Minadora will receive $200 and be named in the Academy of American Poets annual report.
Honorable Mentions:
"In Absentia" by Brian Czyzyk
"Portrait of Nymphs Bathing" and "The Deer Bone" by Aza Pace
Congratulations!
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Previous Winners
- 2021 Aza Pace for "Chapel"
- 2020 Aza Pace for "My Father Asks What I'm Looking At"
- 2019 Megan Arlett for "Jaw"
- 2018 Megan Arlett for "Turn of the Millennium"
- 2017 Andrew Koch for "Inheritance"
- 2016 Chelsea Wagenaar for "The Spinning Place"
- 2015 Matt Haines for "The Instructor"
- 2014 Chelsea Wagenaar for "August"
- 2013 Justin Bigos for "Three Rivers"
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Paul Voertman endowed the Voertman / Academy of American Poets Prize for creative writing graduate students at UNT.
Video: In memory of Paul Voertman https://youtu.be/ZYI66KB4Xuw