Publisher's Synopsis
The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize was launched by Waywiser in 2005, and is awarded annually to the best first or second collection of original poems in English submitted. The winner receives a purse of £1,750, and his or her collection is published by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. The prize has gone from strength to strength during its first five years, helped by a highly distinguished list of final judges: J.D. McClatchy, Mary Jo Salter, Richard Wilbur, Alan Shapiro and Rosanna Warren.
The Hecht Prize Anthology, 2005-2009 contains work by fifty of the poets who reached the contest's semi-finals, including the five eventual winners, Morri Creech, Erica Dawson, Rose Kelleher, Carrie Jerrell and Matthew Ladd.
Joseph Harrison is Waywiser's Senior American Editor. His book Someone Else's Name (Waywiser, 2003) was named as one of five poetry books of the year by the Washington Post. His second book of poems, Identity Theft, was published by Waywiser in 2008. In 2005 he was the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2009 he received a Fellowship in Poetry from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
