FAYETTEVILLE -- Andrew Gent has won the 2016 Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press.
This year's winner was selected by editor Billy Collins, a former U.S. Poet Laureate whose career received a boost after the University of Arkansas Press published a book of his poetry in 1988.
Gent works as a technical writer in New Hampshire. His winning manuscript, [explicit lyrics], will become his first book of poetry, to be published next year by the press. Gent also will receive a $5,000 cash prize. His poems have appeared in the Chicago Review and Painted Bride, among other publications.
Collins, in the statement announcing the prize winner, described Gent's writing as "compact and strikingly imaginative poems, many of which seem to erase themselves at the end leaving you blinking and wondering how the poet and his poem managed to vanish."
Three finalists for the prize will also have books published by the press next year: Laura McKee, Brock Jones and Joe Wilkins.
The award dates back to the Arkansas Poetry Prize, first awarded in 1990. Miller Williams co-founded the University of Arkansas Press and was a well-regarded poet who read some of his work at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton. Williams died in January.
Metro on 07/18/2015