North American Review presents the winners of the 2020 Annual James Hearst Poetry Prize. We thank each of the 1,250 poets who submitted content to this contest and congratulate this year's winners.
First Place
“The invention of Ether” – Katy Aisenberg
Runner-Up
“Prayers, 1490” – Jennifer Barber
Honorable Mentions
"Unripped” – Jessica Barksdale
Finalists
“Pink Moon” – Tina Barr
“Inventory” – Erica Bodwell
“Portrait of Everyone” – MRB Chelko
“Persepohone & Demeter” – Derick Ebert
“I, Lazarus” – Jessie Ehman
“Prayer to Garlic” – Greg Emilio
“Trigger” – Monica Fields
“Idiom” – Rebecca Foust
“Percheron” – David Giannini
“Boy Astride A Grand Piano” – John Glowney
“For a Colleague Who Died Suddenly and Unexpectedly” – John Hodgen
“Juxtaposing the Black Girl & the Abuse” – Shirley Jones-Luke
“After the Peacocks” – Hannah King
“Etymology of a Name” – Cristina Medina
About the Judge
lya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His work won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). His poems have been translated into over twenty languages, and his books are published in many countries, including Turkey, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”