For the month of April, Foundlings Press will accept submissions for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. This year’s guest judge is David St. John. The winning poet will receive a $250 award and a limited edition broadside publication of the winning poem. Submission is free and open to all.
SELECTION AND PRIZE
The winner of the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize will receive $250 and publication of a limited-edition run of letterpress broadsides of the winning poem. The broadsides will be available for sale exclusively at FoundlingsPress.com until the run sells out.
HOW TO SUBMIT
Entry is free
Send only one poem as a PDF attachment to publisher@foundlingspress.com
Submissions must be previously unpublished
Entry window opens March 31 at 11:59pm ET and closes April 30 at 11:59pm ET
We will disregard submissions that arrive outside that window
MARY RUEFLE PICKS INAUGURAL RALPH ANGEL POETRY PRIZE WINNER MARGARITA SERAFIMOVA
Foundlings Press introduced the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in 2021, with the blessing of Mary Angel and assistance from generous friends. Mary Ruefle, a close friend of Ralph Angel and of the press, served as the first guest judge. She selected Margarita Serafimova. Margarita’s poem “The Biologists” is available as a limited-edition broadside now.
ABOUT DAVID ST. JOHN
David St. John is an American poet. He has been honored, over the course of his career, with many prizes for poets, including: both the Rome Prize Fellowship and the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; the O. B. Hardison Prize (a career award for teaching and poetic achievement) from The Folger Shakespeare Library; and the George Drury Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation.
He is the author of eleven collections of poetry (including Study for the World’s Body, nominated for The National Book Award in Poetry), most recently The Last Troubadour: New and Selected Poems, as well as a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us. He is the co-editor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry and the editor of The Selected Levis and The Darkening Trapeze: Last Poems of Larry Levis.
David St. John has written libretti for the opera, THE FACE, and for the choral symphony, THE SHORE. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016) and named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2017). David St. John is University Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Chair of English at The University of Southern California. He lives with his wife, poet and essayist Anna Journey, in Venice Beach, California.
David St. John
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.com/.
In Memory of Ralph Angel