The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce that the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize has been awarded to J. Bailey Hutchinson by series editor Patricia Smith. The poet will receive a $5,000 cash prize, and her manuscript Gut will be published in the Miller Williams Poetry Series in the spring of 2022. For almost a quarter century the press has made this series the cornerstone of its work as a publisher of some of the country’s best new poetry. The series and prize are named for and operated to honor the cofounder and longtime director of the press Miller Williams.
“I couldn’t be more energized and excited knowing that Bailey Hutchinson’s Gut is the first winning manuscript in my tenure as the Miller Williams series editor,” said Patricia Smith. “In addition to snagging first place, Gut also grabs the honors for the most appropriate manuscript title ever– because the gut is exactly where this book hits, relentlessly, poem after poem, page after page.”
“Bailey touts a smoldering command of her slice of the world, and her astute ability to recreate all the delightful nuances of that world is fully at work in this winning book,” added Smith.
In addition to selecting Hutchinson’s Gut, Patricia Smith chose as finalists for the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Michael Mlekoday’s manuscript All Earthly Bodies and Casey Thayer’s manuscript Rational Anthem, both of which will also be published in the spring of 2022.
Hutchinson’s manuscript Gut explores physical, psychological, and cultural inheritance as it describes everything from the food we eat, the mental health we experience, and the expectations that fall especially to women in the South. Marked by poems that blunder again and again in pursuit of intimacy, the collection scorns the expectations foisted upon it and seeks refuge in fantasy, cartoons, and other elements of pop culture. But everything Gut runs from is still there, present, living in the very viscera of it—thus its title. This is a book whose ambition is to capture the tension between being both pigheadedly independent and also profoundly needful of love—while also sounding very much like Memphis and magic.
J. Bailey Hutchinson is a poet from Memphis, Tennessee. She earned her MFA from the University of Arkansas where she served as the assistant director of the Open Mouth Literary Center. She is associate editor at Milkweed Editions, and her work can be found in Muzzle Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, and more. She lives in Minneapolis.