This $1000 prize is awarded annually to the best poem/s published in a volume year of Shenandoah. All poems published in the magazine are automatically considered for the prize.


Past Recipients:

2011-12: David Roderick, “Green Fields,” 61/1
2010: Rodney Jones, “In Media Res,” 60/1-2
2009: Cathryn Hankla, “Bee Tree,” 59/2
2008: Brendan Galvin, “This Time,” 58/2
2007: David Bottoms, “First Woods,” 57/3
2006: Eavan Boland, “Violence Against Women,” 56/3
2005: Steve Scafidi, Jr., “The Egg Suckers,” 55/1
2004: David Kirby, “I Think Satan Done It,” “Scarlet Ribbons,” 54/2
2003: Cody Walker, “Hephzibah Cemetery, April 1889,” “New Orleans, August, 1890,” 53/4
2002: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, “Small Murders,” 52/1
2001: Alice Friman, “Otma Rood,” 51/4
2000: Debra Nystrom, “The Cliff Swallows, ” 50/4
1999: Ted Kooser, “Early Morning Walk: Postcards to Jim Harrison,” 49/3
1998: Mary Oliver, “Flare,” 48/3
1997: Carolyn Miller, “Under the Magnolia,” 47/3
1996: Margaret Gibson, “Earth Elegy,” 46/4
1995: Eamon Grennan, “Howth, January, 1991,” 45/4
1994: Debra Nystrom, “Fly-Fishing on Tommy’s Lake,” 44/2
1993: Betty Adcock, “To a Young Feninist Who Wants to be Free,” “Writing Poems Late,” “The Mind,” 43/3
1992: James Applewhite, “A Change of Sky,” 42/3
1991: Robert B. Shaw, “December Vespers,” “The Key,” At the Bait Store,” 41/4
1990: Paula Closson Buck, “Little Spanish Poems,” 40/4
1989: David McKain, “Bus Stop in Soviet Georgia,” 39/1