We’re very pleased to share that Mary Ruefle will judge our inaugural Ralph Angel Poetry Prize.
We announced the prize, which honors the late poet Ralph Angel, in March. Submissions are open (and free) through April. The inaugural prize will recognize a single poem; the winning poet, selected by Mary Ruefle, will receive a $250 award and a limited edition broadside publication of the winning poem. The broadsides will be available for sale exclusively here at FoundlingsPress.com until the run sells out.
HOW TO SUBMIT
Entry is free
Send only one poem as a Word or PDF attachment to publisher@foundlingspress.com
Submissions must be previously unpublished
Entry window closes April 30 at 11:59pm ET
ABOUT RALPH ANGEL
Ralph Angel (1951-2020) was an American poet, translator, and educator. He was born in Seattle, Washington, as a second-generation American of Sephardic Jewish descent. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Washington and his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Irvine. He went on to become the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor at the University of Redlands, where he shaped the Creative Writing Department and taught for 39 years, and he was a beloved member of the MFA in Writing faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Angel’s published works included Anxious Latitudes (Wesleyan University Press, 1986); Neither World (Miami University Press, 1995), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; Twice Removed (Sarabande Books, 2001), which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award; Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986-2006 (Sarabande Books, 2006), honored with the 2007 PEN USA Award for Poetry; and Your Moon (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2013), which was awarded the 2013 Green Rose Poetry Prize. His translation of the Federico García Lorca collection, Poema del cante jondo / Poem of the Deep Song, (Sarabande Books, 2006) received a Willis Barnstone Poetry Translation Prize.
Angel’s poems have appeared in scores of magazines, and have been collected in numerous anthologies, including The Plume Anthology of Poetry, Pratik International, The Heart's Many Doors, The Best American Poetry, American Hybrid, Poets of the New Century, and Forgotten Language. Other awards included a gift from the Elgin Cox Trust, a Pushcart Prize, the Gertrude Stein Award, a Fulbright Foundation fellowship, and the Bess Hokin Award of the Modern Poetry Association.
Angel was a friend of Foundlings Press and contributed to the Strays series. His collection in Strays Pack 2 was his final publication before his passing on March 6, 2020.
Foundlings Press Publisher Aidan Ryan says: I remember vividly speaking with Ralph over the phone, in the first days of the new year, about his contribution to our series. His voice was like his poems: patient, clear, direct, with a laugh always waiting in the wings. Here was a celebrated poet, a senior statesman of poetry, taking a call from a stranger and offering his work (without any chance of acclaim or fair remuneration) to an upstart, unproven little press from Buffalo. I remember the gratitude, amazement, and and relief I felt when Ralph so immediately understood our spirit as a press and the thrust of the Strays project. And what a gift his poems were.
Ralph left behind an incredible body of work, but he also left a legacy of support, guidance, and inspiration for younger poets as well as his contemporaries. I’m happy that, with Mary Angel’s blessing and assistance, we can honor Ralph in a way that feels continuous with his life’s work: By recognizing, honoring, and encouraging the work of other poets.
More information about Ralph and his poetry is available at https://ralphangel.online/.
Mary Ruefle | Photo Credit: Matt Valentine
ABOUT MARY RUEFLE
Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007), and is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.
More information about Mary and her poetry is available at http://maryruefle.com/.