Michael Waters Poetry Prize

A prize of $6,000 and publication by SIR Press is awarded annually for a collection of poetry written in English. All entries are considered for publication.
Next deadline: February 2, 2026.
Carl Phillips will judge.
is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North (2024) and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/USA Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets.
Monica Youn selected Kirsten Kaschock's Docenture: A Tale of Hue as Told by the Estate听as winner of the 2025 Prize.
Click here for complete 2025 MWPP results.
Contest mailing address (for inquiries and print entries):
听 听 听 听 听 Southern Indiana Review
听 听 听 听 听 Michael Waters Poetry Prize
听 听 听 听 听 缅北强奸
听 听 听 听 听 8600 University Boulevard
听 听 听 听 听 Evansville, IN听 47712
2025 MWPP Winner
, a Pew Fellow in the Arts and Summer Literary Seminars grand prize winner, is the author of six poetry books: Unfathoms, A Beautiful Name for a Girl, The Dottery, Confessional Science-fiction: A Primer, Explain This Corpse, and AutoPortrait (as flotsam), forthcoming from听 Tupelo Press. Coffee House Press published her debut speculative novel, Sleight. A second novel, An听 Impossibility of Crows, winner of the Juniper Prize in fiction, and will be published in 2026 by University of Massachusetts Press.
Previous MWPP Winners
- 2024: Nicole Lachat
- 2023: Natalie Louise Tombasco
- 2022: Chelsea Woodard
- 2021: Bethany Schultz Hurst
- 2020:听Erin Rodoni
- 2019:听Julia Koets
- 2018:听Chelsea Wagenaar
- 2017:听Marty McConnell
- 2016:听Ruth Awad
- 2015:听Annie Kim听
- 2014:听Dennis Hinrichsen听&听Hannah Faith Notess
- 2013:听Doug Ramspeck
Michael Waters Poetry Prize
The Michael Waters Poetry Prize was established in 2013 to honor听Michael鈥檚 contributions to听Southern Indiana Review听and听American arts and letters.
has written fourteen books of poetry, most recently Sinnerman (Etruscan Press, 2023), Caw,听The Dean of Discipline, and Celestial Joyride. He has co-edited several anthologies, including Border Lines: Poems of Migration, Reel Verse: Poems 缅北强奸 the Movies, Contemporary American Poetry, and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali. His poems have appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, and Rolling Stone. He is the recipient of five Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, and New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Waters lives without a cell phone in Ocean, New Jersey.