The Idaho Prize for Poetry 2010
Lost Horse Press is no longer accepting submissions for The Idaho Prize for Poetry 2010, a national competition offering $1,000 plus publication by Lost Horse Press for a book-length poetry manuscript. The winner and finalists will be announced on 15 August 2010.
The final judge for this seventh annual poetry book contest sponsored by Lost Horse Press is Thomas Lux.
For guidelines or additional information about the Idaho Prize for poetry, please contact Lost Horse Press at 208-255-4410, email losthorsepress@mindspring.com or visit our Idaho Prize Page.
Benjamin Franklin Award Winner
LUCIFER, poems by Philip Memmer, has been named as Silver Award winner in the 22nd annual Benjamin Franklin Awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association in Recognition of Excellence in Independent Publishing
IBPA recently honored the best books in 50 categories at the annual Benjamin Franklin Awards in New York City on May 24, 2010 just prior to the annual BookExpo America Trade Show.
Judged by a panel of book industry experts, including buyers at wholesale and retail levels, librarians, book critics, design experts, and independent publishing consultants, these books have been scrutinized by individuals involved in the very markets in which the books are competing.
Named in honor of America's cherished publisher and printer, the Benjamin Franklin Award recognizes excellence in independent publishing. Books are grouped by genre and are judged on editorial and design merit by top practitioners in each field. A panel of 150 judges from throughout the publishing industry weighed and evaluated close to 1,300 submissions in 50 categories to create the list of more than 150 finalists for the 2009 publishing year. Publishers large and small competed for the coveted Benjamin Franklin Awards.
IBPA, with more than 3,200 members, is the largest trade association representing independent publishers. Founded in 1983, its mission is to advance the professional interests of independent publishers.
For more information, contact Christine Holbert at 208.255.4410 or email losthorsepress@mindspring.com.
Award Finalist
I GO TO THE RUINED PLACE is one of three finalists in the HIGH PLAINS BOOK AWARDS for Poetry. Congratulations to the editors and all contributing poets.
The Reviews Are In...
Decomposition: An Anthology of Fungi-Inspired Poems, a poetry anthology edited by Renée Roehl and Kelly Chadwick
"Humorous, authentic, and intelligent, Decomposition is not to be missed. One would only hope that Roehl and Chadwick will one day compile a second volume of mushroom poems in translation or poetry written by mycologists and microbiologists. Decomposition is a stunning achievement – foxfire for the mind. " –David Rose, Fungi Magazine
Lucifer: A Hagiography, a poem by Philip Memmer
"The poems are arable, beautiful, and arranged in a way that is suspenseful in plot. . . . This is a book that is singular in its style, appeal, and brilliance. I can’t recommend it more highly." –Judith Harris, Neo Magazine
Feeding Strays, very short fiction by Stefanie Freele
"I've just finished reading Stefanie Freele's Feeding Strays for the second time, and I've got hundreds of things to talk about, but what's on my mind now is this: her beginnings astound me. . . . Stefanie's stories matter. I love that about them. And it is what I think you will love about them, too." –Randall Brown, FlashFiction.net
"The world doesn't stop every time an author writes a good book. Which is why I'm thankful for books like Feeding Strays that I can keep coming back to. . . . Freele paints the most interesting, compelling thing she can put together in a given amount of space. She gives us snapshots not necessarily of humanity, but of what it is to be alive. Little moments, stray moments. . . . Feeding Strays is a great public transit companion because every piece is so short and transporting." –Evan Karp, SF Literary Culture Examiner
As Is, poems by Sheryl Noethe
"As Is rescues us from the degenerative forces that have captured us, hypnotized us, all our lives. With Noethe's courage, we are now captured between the lines of exquisite irony and delicate vengeance." –Joy DeStefano
"The collection is riveting for the poet's caustic honesty, as well as her ability to zero in on topics that cause a stir." –Jonas Ehudin, The Missoula Independent
ForeWord Reviews Magazine Book Award Finalist
ForeWord Reviews is pleased to announce the finalists in the 2009 Book of the Year Awards. The finalists, representing 360 publishers, were selected from 1,400 entries in 60 categories. These books are examples of independent publishing at its best. Lost Horse Press' short story collection by Stefanie Freele, FEEDING STRAYS, is a finalist.
The winners will be determined by a panel of librarians and booksellers selected from our readership. Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners, as well as Editor's Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction will be announced at a special program at BookExpo America in New York City on May 25.
ForeWord's Book of the Year Awards program was designed to discover distinctive books from independent publishers across a number of genres. The Awards program often serves to provide these worthy projects with a second wind of publicity.
Now Available
Decomposition, Fungi-inspired Poems, edited by Renée Roehl and Kelly Chadwick
Gathered from the root-zones of many different trees, knife-scraped from rock-face, lifted from dung, spore-flung into air, these gathered mushroom poems offer undomestic, distinctive discoveries to all who choose to join the effort to find them.
—Jane Hirshfield
Frescoes, poems by Stephen Gibson
Winner of the 2010 Idaho Prize for Poetry, selected by Carolyne Wright
Harsh and highly accomplished, these poems redeem the people from the paint, plaster and piety. They pull victims and perpetrators alike out of the history and myth of the treasures of Great Arts into the arena of our ongoing moral dilemmas, our struggles for survival as well as for the preservation of compassion and decency in a perennially fallen human world. After reading these poems, we will never again be able to stand before these mysteries of life and death and then, like too many tourists, merely check them off our guidebook’s must-see list. Stephen Gibson has created a sequence of poems with the same sweep and dimension as the art that inspired them.
—Carolyne Wright, Final Judge for the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2009
Lost Horse Press New Poets Series:
New Poets, Short Books, Volume IV
Series editor, Marvin Bell
Poems by Abby E. Murray, Jesse S. Fourmy, and Karen Holman
This fourth volume of the Lost Horse Press
New Poets | Short Books series offers three
strong voices, each with a personal brand
of courage. Their lives are as different from one another as can be, and their sensibilities are very much their own, yet in practicing the art of poetry they share something too mysterious and vital ever to be replaced by a new technology. That is because poetry is a primary and, one might argue, primal manifestation of the life force itself. All of our brilliant inventions notwithstanding, what life feels like remains inside us. Here are three poets, each of whose personal language is part of that richness we cannot do without.
—Marvin Bell
For each book sold, $2 will be donated
to the Bonner County (Idaho) Human Rights Task Force.
I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights
Edited by the poets Melissa Kwasny and M.L. "Mandy" Smoker, here is what their introduction tells us about the experience of working on this honest, brutal, and inspiring collection:
When we made our call for submissions for an anthology of poems in defense of human rights, the allegations of torture were foremost in our minds. We knew people were outraged, saddened, profoundly moved and ashamed. But we also wanted to reach people who had suffered violations of their own rights from circumstances across the globe, or whose families had, or for whom preventing or healing these violations had become a life’s work. We drafted our call loosely: We are increasingly witness to torture, terrorisms and other violations of human rights at unprecedented degrees. What do our instincts tell us and what is our response to these violations? What is our vision of a future wherein human rights are not only respected but expanded?
What we received were both first hand accounts of violation—see prisoner Adrian English’s “Raped Man’s Stream of Consciousness,” or Farnoosh Moshiri’s poem recounting the terror of giving birth in Iran, or Li-Young Lee’s "Self-Help for Fellow Refugees"—and responses from people who feel struck personally by the blows enacted on others: To speak for, to speak as, and to speak against. We were surprised at the range of issues spoken to by the poets. While torture remained a critical topic, as well as issues at stake in the Iraq War, there were also poems that addressed immigrant rights, prisoners’ rights, the Holocaust, the wars in Cambodia, Vietnam, Serbia, South America, Palestine and Israel. We received poems that spoke of suicide bombing, violence against women, the aftermath of 9/11, and outlawing marriage for gay Americans.
We were also moved at the range of experience among the responders: homeless advocates, civil rights workers, clinical social workers, medics, the mentally ill, veterans, humanitarian aid workers, teachers, conscientious objectors, and, of course, many writers who work and fight daily for social justice in their communities. We are particularly proud of the number of Native American poets included in this anthology, something unusual in anthologies of this sort. It seemed to us impossible to collect a group of poems on human rights issues if we didn’t acknowledge the far reaching and often appalling violations that have taken place in our own country, upon the first citizens of this land who belong to five-hundred-sixty-two federally recognized tribes who function as sovereign nations. It is the acknowledgement of this history, among others, that will allow us to move forward as a country with a clearer conscience, extending our hand to other nations and other peoples who continue to endure neglect and abuse.
I Go to the Ruined Place is available at your local bookstore or online book retailer.
Mission Statement
Established in 1998, Lost Horse Press—a nonprofit independent press—publishes poetry titles of high literary merit, and makes available other fine contemporary literature through cultural, educational and publishing programs and activities. The Lost Horse New Poets, Short Books Series, edited by Marvin Bell, is dedicated to works—often ignored by conglomerate publishers—which are so much in danger of vanishing into obscurity in what has become the age of chain stores and mass appeal food, movies, art and books.