Wisconsin Poetry Series
Ronald Wallace and Sean Bishop, Series Editors
This series includes:
The Brittingham Prize in Poetry
The Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry
The Four Lakes Prize in Poetry
Currently, the University of Wisconsin Press seeks to publish a minimum of five poetry titles each year as part of the Wisconsin Poetry Series. Works are chosen for publication following an open reading period (submissions are accepted between July 15 and September 15) for the poetry prizes awarded by the Press.
The Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry are awarded annually. They are selected by a guest judge following an initial screening process conducted by coeditors Ron Wallace and Sean Bishop in conjunction with the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The winner of each prize receives $1,000 and the publication of their work by the University of Wisconsin Press.
The Brittingham Prize in Poetry was founded in 1985 with the help of grants from the Brittingham Trust. Administered by the UW Foundation, the trust was established in 1924 by the wills of lumber baron Thomas Evans Brittingham Sr. and his wife, activist Mary Clark Brittingham, to benefit the University.
The Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry was founded in 1994 with the help of a bequest from Sara Pollak. The prize honors her husband, Felix, a major Wisconsin poet and former curator of the Rare Book Room and Little Magazine Collection in the UW–Madison Libraries.
The Four Lakes Prize in Poetry may be awarded annually to a collection of poetry submitted by a previous winner of either the Brittingham or Felix Pollak prizes. Recipients are selected by the coeditors of the Wisconsin Poetry Series with input from screeners and faculty in the Creative Writing Program at UW–Madison.
Priority for publication apart from the prizes is given to titles selected as honorable mention by that year’s judge or otherwise deemed to be exceptional by the series coeditors and screening committee.
For poetry submission guidelines, click here.
Featured
Alien Miss
Carlina Duan
“A vivid and electric collection that ranges from surrealist alter-ego poems that vivisect the fetishization of Asian femininity to narrative poems that recount the absurd and tender contradictions of a Chinese childhood in the Midwest. Duan offers poetry that is outsized with lyrical rage and heart.”
—Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings
Paper $16.95
ISBN 9780299331344
Blood Aria
Christopher Nelson
“In meditations ranging from a child's incomprehension of a father's violence to the suffering of those cast out for their sexual desires to the horror of mass shootings, the poems of Blood Aria pulse with an urgency that is both anguished and exalted. And transformative. To experience poems as passionate, as charged with wisdom as these is to enter into a kind of spiritual quest.”
—Boyer Rickel, author of remanence
Paper $16.95
ISBN 9780299331542
Recent and Backlist
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Fruit
Bruce Snider
Spring 2020


Gloss
Rebecca Hazelton
Spring 2019


Hive
Christina Stoddard
Spring 2015


Wait
Alison Stine
Spring 2011


Funny
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Fall 2005


Ripe
Roy Jacobstein
Fall 2002


Ejo
Poems, Rwanda, 1991–1994
Derick Burleson
Fall 2000


Liver
Charles Harper Webb
Fall 1999


Bardo
Suzanne Paola
Fall 1998


Salt
Renée Ashley
Fall 1991
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