A Brief Look at Ohio Poet of the Year

Nominations Now Being Accepted

Since 1976, the Ohio Poetry Day Association (founded in 1937 by authorization of the Ohio Legislature) has been naming annually an Ohio Poet of the Year, basing its choice on a book published in the previous one to two years. The award is based on the one book and not on an aggregation of work published over some time.

During the first several years, selection was made by the Poetry Day Board, acting as a committee of the whole. In the past 20 or so years, there has been a coordinator and a group of (lately) four judges, different each year, who are chosen to represent academic and non-academic outlooks, and to include generally an equal number of male and female judges, one of whom is a former Poet of the Year.

One variation is that in the 50th and 75th years of Poetry Day (the competition had not existed at the 25th year), instead of honoring an already-published book, the OPD Association has offered a contest for a chapbook manuscript and has published the winner, thus giving the award to a brand new book rather than one already extant.

Several rules govern for the poet and the book to qualify. First is that poets may not self-nominate, but their books can be offered by others: a publisher or editor, a college faculty or member thereof, a writers' or poets' organization, any other person of poetic standing in the state, or from the lists of books newly published that are put out by the Ohioana Library several times a year. The poet must be a native or a resident of Ohio, or if neither, must have lived in Ohio long enough to have formed serious ties to the state. (A list of former winners of Poet of the Year follows.)

The book nominated must be longer than a chapbook (i.e., more than 48 pages) and not a "collected" or "complete" works—the former because it gives too few poems to consider, and the latter because it is generally uneven in quality. The book may be from a commercial or university press or self-published, but it may not come from a vanity press. Books nominated will be screened for quality and to ensure that there are not too many of them for judges to consider. For example, one year there were eight nominations, and the judges complained at so many. Generally, the list is three to five books.

Nominations must be in to the coordinator by May 1 and can be sent to:

Amy Jo Zook
3520 State Route 56
Mechanicsburg, OH 43044

Previous awards or honors to the book are allowed. Poets who have previously been nominated may be so again, for a different book, but no one will be chosen a second time as Poet of the Year. Only one book is required to accompany the nomination, for all the books will be sent to the judges in a round-robin fashion and eventually returned to the coordinator when all votes have been submitted.

The person chosen as poet of the year will be notified in the late summer and invited to be the luncheon speaker at Ohio Poetry Day weekend in October. The award consists of $200 and a commemorative plaque, with one poem for the chosen book also being published in the year's BEST OF collection of general contest winners.

Ohio poets are writing and publishing great collections of poems. I encourage readers to submit their nominations soon.

- Amy Jo Zook

Previous Ohio Poets of the Year

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994	Hallie Cramer Muriel de Chambrun Virginia Moran Evans Cecil Hale Hartzell Celia Dimmette Novella Humphrey Davis Daisy Lee Donaldson Mary Oliver James Magner, Jr. James C. Kilgore no award given Charlotte Mann Richard Hague Michael J. Rosen J. A. Totts Timothy Russell Amy Jo Schoonover Robert Wallace Bonnie Jacobson David Baker Debra Allbery Grace Butcher Frankie Paino David Citino Tom Andrews Michael J. Bugeja	A Sprig of Bittersweet Sudden Soring To Seek the Sun Song on the Anvil Ocean Carry Us Far There Was This Place Surface Fragments Twelve Moons Till No Light Leaps African Violet     --- Grape Pitcher Ripening A Drink at the Mirage Outside the Dream The Possibility of Turning to Salt New & Used Poems The Common Summer Stopping for Time Sweet Home, Saturday Night Walking Distance Child, House, World The Rapture of Matter The Discipline The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle After Oz
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018	Alberta Turner Lou Suarez William Matthews James Cummins Susan Grimm Miriam Vermilya Myrna Stone Pauletta Hansel Deanna Packard Elton Glaser Cathryn Essinger Herbert W. Martin David Hassler Martha Collins William Heyen Stephen Haven Terry Hermsen Will Wells George Looney Linda Ann Schofield Lianne Spidel Dzvinia Orlowsky David Lee Garrison Jeff Gundy Maggie Smith Kathy Fagan Susan Glassmeyer	Beginning With And Losses of Moment Time & Money Portrait in a Spoon Almost Home Heartwood The Art of Loss Divining ln Dreams We Kiss Ourselves Goodbye Pelican Talks My Dog Does Not Read Plato Escape to the Promised Land Red Kimono, Yellow Barn Blue Front The Confessions of Doc Williams Dust and Bread The River's Daughter Unsettled Accounts Open Between Us Psalms of the Hood What to Tell Joseme Silvertone Playing Bach in the D.C. Metro Somewhere Near Defiance The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison Sycamore Invisible Fish

NOTE: This article was edited on March 19, 2019 to include the winners for 2016-2018.