Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles by Janée J. Baugher of Seattle, Washington has been selected by Shane McCrae to win the 2023 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. Baugher receives a $3,000 cash prize, a writing residency, publication by Tupelo Press, and national distribution though University of Chicago Press.
Janée J. Baugher is the author of the only craft book of its kind, The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction (McFarland, 2020), as well as the full-length ekphrastic poetry collections Coördinates of Yes (Ahadada Books, 2010) and The Body’s Physics (Tebot Bach, 2013). A former summer creative writing director at Interlochen Center for the Arts, she’s been featured on Seattle Channel TV and at the Library of Congress. Baugher is an assistant editor at Boulevard magazine and the recipient of a 2024 CityArtist grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.
Judge’s Citation:
The first two poems of The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles so excited me that I had to stop reading, stand up and leave the room, and cross a few items off my daily list of things to do before I could return to the manuscript—I knew I wouldn’t be able to judge the manuscript fairly if I just rode that initial buzz to the end. But as I walked down the hall, and then down the stairs, I was thinking about those poems, and in particular about the form in which the poet had chosen to write them—each poem is a series of numbered notes, some lineated, some written like prose, each note implicitly guiding the reader to more information about a poem’s titular painting. The notes brilliantly stitch the act of composition to the page while also holding the poems open—the best lyric poems, after all, are finally irresolvable; they cannot be finished, closed. Via the notes, one sees through the paintings to which they refer, and imagines oneself in the position of Andrew Wyeth himself, a step away from the painting he has just made, or is making, so that one traces the poet’s ekphrastic experience from behind the painting, as it were, rather than in front of it. What a strange, impossible effect! But in The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles it is achieved again and again. And it’s an effect I couldn’t, it turns out, walk away from, and having done the things I had stood up to do, I climbed the stairs, walked back to my desk, and sat down to The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles again, still buzzing, held open.
—Shane McCrae, author of The Many Hundreds of the Scent
Finalists:
The Book of Marys and Glaciers by Carrie Olivia Adams of Chicago, Illinois
The Long Float by Elizabeth Chapman of Palo Alto, California
The Strategic Crescent by Adam Day of Louisville, Kentucky
#TheRebelSonnets by Bino Realuyo of New York, New York
For the Green & Signifying Fields by Siobhan Scarry of Newton, Kansas.
Skiathos (Shadow of Athos) by Nicholas Samaras of West Nyack, New York
Black Glass Horizon by Stephanie Strickland of New York, New York
Antiphon by Kelsi Vanada of Tucson, Arizona
THIS IS JEOPARDY! by Julie Marie Wade of Dania Beach, Florida
Murmuration Archives by Felicia Zamora of Cincinnati, Ohio
Semifinalists:
collective by Katie Berta of Tempe, Arizona
Ofrenda by Anaïs Deal-Márquez of Minneapolis, Minnesota
Someone Else’s Hunger by Isabella DeSendi of Hoboken, New Jersey
Heartland Errata by Dante Di Stefano of Endwell, New York
Rivermouth Shouting by Jean Gallagher of New York, New York
The Kingdom of Heaven: A Brief Appearance by Stephen Hitchcock of Charlottesville, Virginia
Long Season by Stephanie Horvath of Putney, Vermont
nails and wings by Betsy Johnson of St. Joseph, Minnesota
Dear Photographer by Jason Labbe of Bethany, Connecticut
Beautiful Red Volees by Ricardo H.J. León of Houston, Texas
American Etymologies by Matthew Minicucci of Northport, Alabama
What is Simple by Megan Shevenock of Los Angeles, California
Willowwacks by John Tobin of Gambrills, Maryland
Orange Blossom Sugar: The Story of Marie Lafarge by Emily Paige Wilson of Asheville, North Carolina
I Came to This Planet for Our Family Reunion by David Eileen Winn of Fort Lauderdale, Florida
We wish to congratulate Janée J. Baugher, our distinguished finalists and semifinalists, and all who entered manuscripts in the Dorset Prize for delighting us with a stunning number of terrific submissions. By your writing, each of you joins in the solitary and so-important work of making poetry. Many, many thanks to our judge, Shane McCrae, for blessing us with the so-very-hard (and largely unsung) work of selecting a winner and for writing a superbly thoughtful citation.
Please bear in mind that the Berkshire Prize for a First of Second Book of Poetry is open now, judged by Matthew Rohrer. See submission guidelines here.