Miller Williams Poetry Series

Edited by Patricia Smith

Every year, the University of Arkansas Press accepts submissions for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and from the books selected awards the $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize in the following summer. 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.

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About the Prize

Application Deadline

The submission deadline for the 2028 Miller Williams Poetry Prize is
September 30, 2026.

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Series editor Patricia Smith serves as the judge for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. With the help of screeners, she awards to three authors publication in the series. This is the most significant award the press can offer: the opportunity for the author’s work to be published with all the dedication and expertise we have to offer. We provide professional copyediting by expert poetry editors, design and production by veteran designers who specialize in the typesetting of verse, and production managed by a house with a history of printing first-rate books. We believe this offers the poet the best possible opportunity to connect with his or her audience in print. This prize goes to all three books selected for the series. Three of the books are announced as finalists for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. One is further chosen as the winner of the prize and receives $5,000 in cash in addition to publication.

Length. Manuscripts must be between sixty and ninety pages.

Previous publication. The manuscript must be previously unpublished. Individual poems may have been published in chapbooks, journals, and anthologies.

Translations. Work in translation is not accepted.

Associations with the editor. Friends, family, current students, and former students of the editor should refrain from submitting.

Multiple submissions. No more than one manuscript per author.

Authorship. No more than one author per manuscript.

Simultaneous submissions. Manuscripts under publication consideration or prize competition elsewhere are allowed provided we are notified immediately of their acceptance.

Authors previously published in the series. Any author who has had a manuscript published in the series should not apply again until three years after the publication date of said volume.

Period. Applications are accepted year-round with a rolling deadline of 30 September.

Personal information. Applicants should provide their name, an address, a telephone number, and an email address.

Manuscript content. The first page of the manuscript should start with the title of the collection, followed by a table of contents, and then the poems. Part titles and epigraphs may be included. Dedications, acknowledgments, or any personal information should not be included.

Anonymity. Submissions are judged anonymously. Your name and contact info should be submitted on this submission page but nowhere in the uploaded file. Do not include any specific identifying information anywhere in the manuscript.

File formats. We recommend authors submit their manuscripts as a PDF, which offers the most reliable representation of what is seen on the writer’s computer. Microsoft Word documents (.doc) and Rich-Text Format documents (.rtf) are also acceptable but may display text and formatting differently when opened on the judge’s computer.

Revisions. No revisions will be accepted once the application is complete and the manuscript is uploaded.

Readers fee. A readers’ fee of $28 must be paid at the time of submission. Major credit cards and PayPal are accepted. No checks, transfers, or cash can be accepted.

Selection. The winner and the finalists will be notified by 15 July of the year preceding the year of the prize. (For example, the winner of the 2010 prize is announced in the summer of 2009.)

Title	Author	Year	Prize	Award
Architect	Alison Thumel	2024	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Wager	Adele Elise Williams	2024	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Self-Mythology	Jeremy Michael Clark	2024	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
The Trouble with Light	Jeremy Michael Clark	2024	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
The Daughter of Man	L. J. Sysko	2023	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
To Be Named Something Else	Shaina Phenix	2023	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Gut	J. Bailey Hutchinson	2022	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Red Ocher	Jessica Poli	2022	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Rational Anthem	Casey Thayer	2022	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
All Earthly Bodies	Michael Mlekoday	2022	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Eternal Sentences	Michael McGriff	2021	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Moon News	Craig Blais	2021	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
I/O	Madeleine Wattenberg	2021	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First	Angie Mazakis	2020	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
Roze and Blud	Jayson Iwen	2020	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged)	Judy Halebsky	2020	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Unmanly Grief	Jess Williard	2019	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Series
A Short History of Monsters	Jose Padua	2019	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Ya Te Veo	P. Scott Cunningham	2018	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Walking with Eve in the Loved City	Roy Bentley	2018	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Narcissus Americana	Travis Mossotti	2018	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Mr. Stevens' Secretary	Frances Schenkkan	2017	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Protection Spell	Jennifer Givhan	2017	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
The Wild Night Dress	Laura McCullough	2017	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror	Stephen Gibson	2017	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
[explicit lyrics]	Andrew Gent	2016	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Cenotaph	Brock Jones	2016	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
When We Were Birds	Joe Wilkins	2016	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
See You Soon	Laura McKee	2016	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Reveille	George David Clark	2015	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Ghost Gear	Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum	2014	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Day of the Border Guards	Katherine E. Young	2014	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
To the Bramble and the Briar	Steve Scafidi	2014	Cowinner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Afternoon Masala	Vandana Khanna	2014	Cowinner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Chord Box	Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers	2013	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
The Law of Falling Bodies	Elton Glaser	2013	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Praise Nothing	Joshua Robbins	2013	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
The Coal Life	Adam Vines	2012	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
In Broken Latin	Annette Spaulding-Convy	2012	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Rousing the Machinery	Catherine MacDonald	2012	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
The Empty Loom	Robert Gibb	2012	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Lovely Asunder	Danielle Cadena Deulen	2011	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Paradise	Stephen Gibson	2011	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Harm's Way	Eric Leigh	2010	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
The Dirt Riddles	Michael Walsh	2010	Winner	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Another Creature	Pamela Gemin	2010	Finalist	Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Start with the Trouble	Daniel Donaghy	2009	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
A Sunday in God-Years	Michelle Boisseau	2009	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Weapons Grade	Terese Svoboda	2009	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Rift	Barbara Helfgott Hyett	2008	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
A Necklace of Bees	Dannye Romine Powell	2008	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
The Fire Landscape	Gary Fincke	2008	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Now You're the Enemy	James Allen Hall	2008	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
My Father Says Grace	Donald Platt	2007	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Figured Dark	Greg Rappleye	2007	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Outlaw Style	R.T. Smith	2007	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
World over Water	Robert Gibb	2007	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Waking Stone	Carole Simmons Oles	2006	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
The First Inhabitants of Arcadia	Christopher Bursk	2006	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Fire Baton	Elizabeth Hadaway	2006	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Walking Through the Horizon	Margaret Holley	2006	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Becoming Bone	Annie Boutelle	2005	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Here and Hereafter	Elton Glaser	2005	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Standing around the Heart	Gary Fincke	2005	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
King Vulture	K. E. Duffin	2005	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Candlefish	Elizabeth Biller Chapman	2004	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
August Evening with Trumpet	Harry Humes	2004	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Chattahoochee	Patrick Phillips	2004	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
The Burning World	Robert Gibb	2004	Cowinner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
Trembling Air	Michelle Boisseau	2003	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Prize
News from Where I Live	Martin Lammon	1998	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
The Listening Chamber	William Aberg	1997	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
Anne & Alpheus, 1842-1882	Joe Survant	1996	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
The Man on the Tower	Charles Rafferty	1995	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
At Every Wedding Someone Stays Home	Dannye Romine Powell	1994	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
Conservator's Song	William C. Bowie	1993	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
The Angel of Obsession	Julie Suk	1992	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award
The Interpretation of Waking Life	Eric Nelson	1991	Winner	Arkansas Poetry Award

“I love poems that vivify and disturb,” says series editor Patrica Smith. “No matter what genre we write in, we’re all essentially storytellers — but it’s poets who toil most industriously, telling huge unwieldy stories within tight and gorgeously controlled confines, stories that are structurally and sonically adventurous, and it’s magic every time it happens. Simply put, when I read a poetry book, I want something to shift in my chest. I want my world to change.”

About the Editor

Patricia Smith

Series Editor

Patricia Smith has been called “a testament to the power of words to change lives.” She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (2017), winner of an NAACP Image Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), which won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (2008), a chronicle of the human and environmental cost of Hurricane Katrina which was nominated for a National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection published by Coffee House Press. Smith collaborated with the photographer Michael Abramson on the book Gotta Go Gotta Flow: Life, Love, and Lust on Chicago’s South Side From the Seventies (2015). Her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, the Paris Review, the New York Times, TriQuarterly, Tin House, the Washington Post, and in both Best American Poetry and Best American Essays.

She is a 2014 Guggenheim fellow, a 2012 fellow at both MacDowell and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner, recipient of a Lannan fellowship and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. She is currently working on a biography of Harriet Tubman, a poetry volume combining text and 19th century African-American photos, and a collaborative novel with her husband Bruce DeSilva, the Edgar-Award winning author of the Liam Mulligan crime novels.

(Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths.)

About the Founder

Miller Williams

Founder

Once described to his pleasure as “the Hank Williams of American poetry,” Miller Williams was born in Arkansas’s Lawrence County in 1930. He attended Hendrix College, Arkansas State University, and the University of Arkansas, where he earned a master’s degree in biology. In the meantime, he published his first book of poems, Et Cetera (1952). In 1962, with the help of Flannery O’Connor, he got a job in the English Department at Louisiana State University and founded The New Orleans Review at Loyola University eight years later.

In 1970 he returned to the University of Arkansas to take a position in the Department of English where he was a key figure in the development of the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation, which grew to become one of the most respected MFA programs in the county. Ten years later he cofounded the University of Arkansas Press where he would go on to publish the works of writers such as Frank Stanford, John Williams, Ellen Gilchrist, Robert Mezey, R. S. Thomas, Leon Stokesbury, Billy Collins, Jimmy Carter, and John Ciardi.

Over the course of a teaching and publishing career that lasted four decades, Williams published over a dozen of his own books of poetry and literary theory. Already an extensively accomplished writer, he came to large national acclaim when in 1997 he read his poem “Of History and Hope” at Bill Clinton’s second inauguration.