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• Submissions must be previously unpublished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/.

Coming Spring 2023: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School

We’re excited to reveal the first title in our 2023 catalog: “Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate”: A Memoir of Frank Stanford in High School, by Leo A. Lensing.

Coming Spring 2023

Leo Lensing’s vivid and critical account of the poet Frank Stanford in high school.

Lensing was a classmate of the poet Frank Stanford at Subiaco Academy, a college preparatory school for boys run by Benedictine monks at Subiaco Abbey that towers over the hamlet of Subiaco, Arkansas, near Paris, Arkansas on State Highway 22 between Little Rock and Fort Smith. Stanford transferred to Subiaco from the public high school in Mountain Home, Arkansas, in 1964; he and Lensing graduated on May 27, 1966.

Vivid, critical, and erudite, this memoir draws on archival research, interviews with monks, classmates, and other contemporaries, the growing body of Stanford scholarship, and Lensing’s original close readings of Stanford’s poems. The book illuminates previously unexplored corners of the poet’s adolescence and early development as a writer and a thinker, especially in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation.

Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate will be available for pre-order in late winter 2023 and copies will go out in the mail in the spring.

To request a digital review proof, titles for resale or institutional collections, or other information, contact us: publisher[at]foundlingspress.com.

About the Author: Leo A. Lensing

Leo A. Lensing is professor of Film Studies emeritus at Wesleyan University and lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. He is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and writes occasionally for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His publications include The Anarchy of the Imagination (1992), a selection of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s essays and interviews, and Arthur Schnitzler’s Träume (2012), a German edition of the Viennese writer’s dream journal.

Printmaker Talia Ryan Joins Foundlings Press for the Annual Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

Visual artist and printmaker Talia Ryan is joining Foundlings Press as the resident artist of the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. Working at the Western New York Book Arts Center, Talia will design and produce a limited-edition broadside for Emma Fuchs’s “Sestina for Klein Blue", which guest judge David St. John selected for the second annual Ralph Angel Poetry prize. The broadside will be available from Foundlings Press in late 2022.

View some of Talia’s recent work, including textile prints, lino, intaglio, letterpress incorporated, and book arts, below:

The Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

Established in 2021, the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize honors the late Ralph Angel, a friend of Foundlings press who appeared in the inaugural Stray in January 2020 before his passing that spring. Each year, Foundlings welcomes single-poem submissions, and a guest judge picks one work to honor with publication in a limited edition broadside. In the first year of the prize, guest judge Mary Ruefle selected Margarita Serafimova’s poem “The Biologists.” Foundlings Art Director Darren Canham produced the limited edition broadside at the Western New York Book Arts Center (WNYBAC) in Buffalo. In the second year of the prize, guest judge David St. John selected Emma Fuchs and her poem “Sestina for Klein Blue,” which will be available later this year.

About Talia Ryan

Talia Ryan is a Buffalo-based artist and art educator. She is primarily a printmaker and painter, but her wide-ranging practice has included photography, textiles, and sculpture. PAUSA Art House hosted the first solo exhibition of Talia’s work in December 2019, and she has joined group exhibitions at the Castellani Art Museum and Nazareth College Calacino Gallery. In the summer of 2021 she was awarded an artist residency at the WNY Book Arts Center, where she is now a teaching artist. She holds dual BA and MA degrees in Studio Art and Art Education from Nazareth College. In addition to working as a studio artist, she teaches advanced studio and AP art at Buffalo Academy of Science Charter School in downtown Buffalo.

Follow

taliaryan.com

IG: @taliaryan.art

Pre-Order Strays Pack Six: Powell, Jarboe, Falck

We’re thrilled to announce the lineup for Strays Pack Six: D.A. Powell, Canese Jarboe, and Noah Falck.

Launched in January 2020, the Strays series comprises packs of original “stray” poetry, with three poets in each pack. Strays have included sequences, experiments, crowns, scraps, fragments, miscellanea, and more. Check out previous packs in out store.

Pre-order Pack Six and check out the original cover art by each of the poets below.

Orders will ship in September 2022.

D.A. POWELL

D. A. Powell's books include Repast, Useless Landscape or A Guide for Boys, and Chronic. Powell received the 2019 John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at the University of San Francisco.

CANESE JARBOE

Canese Jarboe is the author of the chapbook dark acre (Willow Springs Books, 2018) and a 2022 Nō Studios Artist Grant recipient. Their recent work has appeared in Southeast Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. From rural southeastern Kansas, Canese splits their time between the farm and Wisconsin where they are a PhD student in creative writing and AOP Fellow at UW-Milwaukee. More at https://www.canesejarboe.com/.

NOAH FALCK

Noah Falck is the author of Exclusions (finalist for the 2020 Believer Book Award) and Snowmen Losing Weight. His poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Poetry Daily, Poets.org, and have been anthologized in Poem-A-Day 365 Poems for Every Occasion. He lives and works in Buffalo, New York. More at https://www.noahfalck.org/.

Teaser: Pack Six Covers

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

Now Available: Margarita Serafimova's "The Biologists" in Broadside - Winner of the 2021 Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

A limited-edition, letterpress broadside of Margarita Serafimova’s poem “The Biologists”—winner of the 2021 Ralph Angel Poetry Prize—is available now in our webstore.

Mary Ruefle selected “The Biologists” for the inaugural Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in June 2021. The contest saw over 200 submissions. Ruefle and the reading group selected a longlist, a shortlist, and three finalists in addition to Serafimova, whose poem “The Biologists” took top honors.

Foundlings Press partnered with the Western New York Book Arts Center to produce a limited-edition, letterpress broadside of “The Biologists.” Foundlings Art Director Darren Canham worked with the WNYBAC staff to produce the broadsides by hand.

Margarita Serafimova

Margarita Serafimova is the winner of the 2020 biennial Tony Quagliano/ Hawai’i Council for the Humanities International Award for innovative poetry 'recognizing an accomplished poet with an outstanding body of work', 2020 and 2021 Pushcart nominee and a finalist in nine other U.S. and international poetry contests. She has four collections in Bulgarian and two in English, ‘A Surgery of A Star’ (2020) and ‘Еn-tîm’ ('The Forest') (2021). Her work appears widely, including at Nashville Review, LIT, Agenda Poetry, Poetry South, Steam Ticket, Waxwing, Reunion Dallas, Trafika Europe, Obra/ Artifact, Botticelli, Shrew, Noble/ Gas, Great Weather for Media, Landfill, Nixes Mate. Visit.

The Ralph Angel Poetry Prize

The Ralph Angel Poetry Prize honors the memory of the late Ralph Angel, a poet, teacher, and friend to many—including Foundlings Press. The prize recognizes a single poem; the winning poet receives a $250 award and a limited edition broadside publication of the winning poem. Mary Ruefle judged the inaugural prize, introduced in spring 2021.

Foundlings Press will produce the broadsides at Western New York Book Arts Center and they will be available for sale exclusively at FoundlingsPress.com until the run sells out.

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.