Gillian Conoley to Judge Fifth Annual Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

For the month of April, Foundlings Press will accept submissions for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. This year’s guest judge is Gillian Conoley. 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 designed by Foundlings Press printmaker and book artist in residence Talia Ryan. 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• Submissions must be previously unpublished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 April 1 at 11:59pm ET and closes May 1 at 11:59pm ET

• We will disregard submissions that arrive outside that window

Past Winners

• 2024: “Lesson in Vocabulary: Faith,” by Emily Schulten, selected by Richard Jackson

• 2023: “Moon Jar,” by Emma Aylor, selected by Victoria Redel

• 2022: “Sestina for Klein Blue,” by Emma Fuchs, selected by David St. John

• 2021: “The Biologists,” by Margarita Serafimova, selected by Mary Ruefle

Gillian Conoley

Gillian Conoley is a poet, editor, and translator. Often comprising narrative, lyric, and fragmented forms, her work takes up an inquiry into spirit and matter, the individual and the state. The author of ten collections of poetry, including Notes from the Passenger (Nightboat Books, 2023) Conoley received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award.

Conoley has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Denver, Vermont College, Tulane, and Sonoma State University. A long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she is editor of VOLT magazine. Her translations of three books by Henri Michaux, Thousand Times Broken, appearing in English for the first time, is with City Lights. Conoley has collaborated with installation artist Jenny Holzer, composer Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Butoh dancer Judith Kajuwara.

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.

REMEMBERING RALPH ANGEL

Ralph 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/.

Richard Jackson to Judge Fourth Annual Ralph Angel Poetry Prize - Submissions Open

For the month of April, Foundlings Press will accept submissions for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. This year’s guest judge is Richard Jackson. 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 designed by Foundlings Press printmaker and book artist in residence Talia Ryan. 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 April 1 at 11:59pm ET and closes May 1 at 11:59pm ET

• We will disregard submissions that arrive outside that window

Past Winners

• 2023: “Moon Jar,” by Emma Aylor, selected by Victoria Redel

• 2022: “Sestina for Klein Blue,” by Emma Fuchs, selected by David St. John

• 2021: “The Biologists,” by Margarita Serafimova, selected by Mary Ruefle

Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson is the author of 17 books of poetry including The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems, Dispatches, Where The Wind Comes From and Broken Horizons, and 12 books of essays, interviews, translations, editions and anthologies. Winner of Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA. NEH and Witter Bynner Fellowships and the order of Freedom from the President of Slovenia for his literary and humanitarian work during the Balkan wars, he has also edited 32 chapbooks from eastern European poets.

His poems have been translated into 17 languages and his books have won the U of Alabama Book Award, Cleveland State Book Prize, U Mass Juniper Prize, Ashland Poetry Press Award, Eric Hofer Award, Maxine Kumin Award, Ben Franklin Award. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies such as 5 Pushcart appearances, Best American Poems, Best of Georgia Review, Best of Crazy Horse, Prairie Schooner Anthology and others. He has given readings and lectures at dozens of universities and libraries as well as in Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Spain, India, Hong Kong, Canada, England, Wales, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hungary and Romania. Over 52 of his former UT-Chattanooga undergrads have gone on to publish nearly 130 books. He is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at UTC and founder of the Meacham Writers’ Workshops. 

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.

REMEMBERING RALPH ANGEL

Ralph 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/.

Ralph Angel Reading in Northampton, MA

On Friday, April 22, we held our first-ever Ralph Angel Reading at Iconica Social Club in Northampton, Massachusetts, marking the release of the Talia Ryan-designed broadside of “Sestina for Klein Blue” by Emma Fuchs, winner of the 2022 Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. This also happened to be the first Foundlings event outside of the Buffalo area since our participation in the Frank Stanford Festival in Fayetteville, Arkansas in September 2018.

Readers Emma Fuchs, Elle Longpre, and Lucy Wainger entranced the audience with new and old work and had books available for purchase—including Elle’s How to Keep You Alive and Lucy’s In Life There Are Many Things. It was a beautiful night and a great way to remember Ralph, whose heart and spirit flow through this prize and reading series.

Some “Sestina for Klein Blue” broadsides are still available. Order yours in our online bookstore.

Ralph Angel Reading Featuring Emma Fuchs - April 21, Northampton, MA

Ralph Angel Poetry Prize winner Emma Fuchs will join Foundlings in Northampton, MA for a reading celebrating the release of “Sestina for Klein Blue,” Fuchs’s prize-winning poem, now a limited-edition broadside designed by artist Talia Ryan. The reading and broadside launch at Iconica Social Club will include performances by Emma Fuchs, Elle Longpre, and Lucy Wainger.

What to know:

• Readers Emma Fuchs (Ralph Angel Poetry Prize Winner, 2022), Elle Longpre, and Lucy Wainger

• Iconica Social Club, 1 Amber Ln, Northampton, MA 01060

• Friday, April 21, 2023 at 6:30pm

• Limited-edition “Sestina for Klein Blue” broadsides available

We hope to see you there!

Victoria Redel to Judge the 2023 Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

For the month of April, Foundlings Press will accept submissions for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. This year’s guest judge is Victoria Redel. 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

Past Winners

• 2022: “Sestina for Klein Blue,” by Emma Fuchs, selected by David St. John

• 2021: “The Biologists,” by Margarita Serafimova, selected by Mary Ruefle

Victoria Redel

Victoria Redel is a first generation American author of four books of poetry and five books of fiction, most recently the poetry collection Paradise and the novel Before Everything.

Redel is the recipient of the Kent State Wick Poetry Award, Graywolf  Press’ S. Mariella  Gable Award, and was a finalist for the James Laughlin Second Book Award. Her novel Loverboy was adapted for a feature film directed by Kevin Bacon. Her fiction, poetry and essays have been translated into 12 languages. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for The Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center.

Redel is on the graduate and undergraduate faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has also taught in the Graduate Writing Programs of Columbia University, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was the 2013 McGee Professor at Davidson College. 

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.

Remembering Ralph Angel

Ralph 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/.

April: Accepting Submissions for the Second Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

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.

More here.

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