The Brockman-Campbell Award Winners
Technical Community College, proofreads manuscripts for Four Way Books, and provides marketing services for Anchor Perinatal Wellness.
The winner for the 2026 Brockman-Campbell Book Award is All That We Ask
of You Is to Always Be Happy CavanKerry Press, 2025) by Bridget Bell. The judge this year was poet Matthew Lippman. He had this to say about his selection:
“Bridget Bell’s poetry collection had me from the very first note, ‘Soon you will be mired in layers/of din….’ It’s music. It’s what a song does. It elicits something primal and visceral immediately. These poems with their origins in motherhood—explores post-partum depression, healing, sleep and its deprivation, and the body, the work of the body inside and outside birth—are blunt and lyrical. They carry you through the wisdom of contemplation and feeling. Bell’s brilliance in this collection is that she allows us to connect to feel something in our body. This is the most important and necessary thing a poem can do, make us feel something in our belly and lungs. All That We Ask of You is to Always Be Happy works so ferociously on our body that we forget our mind and so we are deep inside the poetry being born and born again with each piece.
Two collections received honorable mentions:
“no swaddle, Mackenzie Kozak’s collection of poems on motherhood,
definitely swaddles the reader, holds us tight, and celebrates the beauty of
becoming a mother. It’s so damn hard, beautiful, too, but some damn hard.
Both of these energies come to the forefront in this collection. One that sings,
burns, and feels like its own person navigating the landscape of being alive.”
“Kelly Riedesel’s Proud Roads, a collection of poems that ‘see’s the wildness
and destruction of Hurricane Helene after it tore through Southern Appalachia.
These poems are inventive and surprising, and Riedesel paints a vivid and
powerful picture of the aftermath of nature’s fury in a way that is musical and
full of moving imagery that celebrates this part of America.”
About the Winning Poet: Bridget Bell is the author of the poetry collection All
That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy (CavanKerry Press, 2025), which
explores maternal mental health. She is also an educator, proofreader, and
digital marketing associate. She teaches composition and literature at Durham
Technical Community College, proofreads manuscripts for Four Way Books,
and provides marketing services for Anchor Perinatal Wellness. She resides in
Durham, North Carolina. You can find her online at bridgetbellpoetry.com
About the Judge: Matthew Lippman is the author of nine poetry collections.
His next collection, Cry Baby Cry, will be published in 2027.
Thank you to everyone who entered this year’s contest.
About the Brockman-Campbell Award
Formerly the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Award (1977-1996)
This award is given annually for the book of poetry judged to be the best published by a North Carolinian in the preceding year.
2025 – Knowing by Mark Cox. Honorable Mentions: Demise of Pangaea by Claudine R. Moreau and Adam in the Garden by A. E. Hines
2024 – The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems 1990-2022 by Michael Hettich. Honorable Mentions: Starfish Wash-Up by Katherine Soniat and The Best Material for the Artist in the World by Kenneth Chamlee.
2023 – Light at the Seam by Joseph Bathanti. Honorable Mention: Horse Not Zebra by Eric Nelson and Polishing the Glass Storm by Katherine Soniat.
2022 – White Lung by Kimberly O’Connor. Honorable Mention: Anything That Happens by Cheryl Wilder and Any Dumb Animal by AE Hines.
2021 – Sailing the Bright Stream: New & Selected Poems by Dave Manning. Honorable Mention: In the Sunroom with Raymond Carver by Dannye Romine Powell, and The Tyranny of Questions by Michael Gaspeny.
2020 – Wild Persistence by Patricia Hooper. Honorable Mention: Trawling the Silences by Kathryn Stripling Byer; Take Me With You Wherever You’re Going by Jessica Jacobs; and Recipe for Garum by Robert Letters.
2019 – Green Target by Tina Barr. Honorable Mention: Antipsalm by Wayne John;
Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse by Valerie Nieman; and Wild Horses by Pam Baggett.
2018 – Every Room in the Body by Kerri French. Honorable Mentions: strange
theatre by John Amen; Ornament by Anna Lena Phillips Bell; and The Brightest Rock
by Kelly Lenox.
2017 – The Ladder by Alan Michael Parker. Honorable Mention: The Door That Always Opens by Julie Funderburk and Bright Stranger by Katherine Soniat.
2016 – Domestic Garden by John Hoppenthaler. Honorable Mention: strange theater by John Amen; Astir by Kevin Boyle; and Salt Moon by Noel Crook.
2015 – Her Small Hands Were Not Beautiful by Kathryn Kirkpatrick. Honorable Mention: The Angel Dialogues by Anthony S. Abbott and Day of the Border Guards by Katherine E. Young.
2014 – Placeholder by Charlaine Cadreau and My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass by Susan Laughter Meyers.
2013 – Our Held Animal Breath by Kathryn Kirkpatrick.
2012 – If Words Could Save Us by Anthony S. Abbott and An Innocent in the House of the Dead by Joanna Catherine Scott (co-winners).
2011 – Long Lens: New and Selected Poems by Peter Makuck.
2010 – The Real Warnings by Rhett Iseman Trull.
2009 – A Necklace of Bees by Dannye Romine Powell.
2008 – Need-Fire by Becky Gould Gibson.
2007 – Keep and Give Away by Susan Meyers.
2006 – Fainting at the Uffizi by Joanna Catherine Scott.
2005 – Possum by Shelby Stephenson.
2004 – The Dark Takes Aim by Julie Suk.
2003 – The Ecstasy of Regret by Dannye Romine Powell.
2002 – Intervale: New and Selected Poems by Betty Adcock.
2001 – Topsoil Road by Robert Morgan.
2000 – Small Potatoes by Mary Kratt.
1999 – Black Shawl by Kathryn Stripling Byer.
1998 – Daylight and Starlight by James Applewhite.
1997 – The Body’s Horizon by Kathryn Kirkpatrick.
1996 – Mortal World by Deborah Pope.
1995 – Snake Dreams by Barbara Presnell.
1994 – Waiting to Know the End by Judy Goldman.
1993 – Salt Works by Michael Chitwood.
1992 – The Complete Bushnell Hamp Poems by Stephen Smith.
1991 – The Light as They Found It by James Seay.
1990 – Lessons in Soaring by James Applewhite.
1989 – Beholdings by Betty Adcock and First Light by Jim Wayne Miller.
1988 – Pilgrims by Peter Makuck.
1987 – Birch-Light by R. T. Smith.
1986 – The Work of the Wrench by Charles Edward Eaton.
1985 – Acquist by Elizabeth Sewel.
1984 – The Thing King by Charles Edward Eaton.
1983 – Night Fishing on Irish Buffalo Creek by Stephen Knauth.
1982 – A Coast of Trees by Archie R. Ammons.
1981 – Earthsleep by Fred Chappell.
1980 – Terra Amata by Kathryn Bright Gurkin and Middle Creek Poems by Shelby Stephenson.
1979 – There Is No Balm in Birmingham by Ann Deagon.
1978 – House on the Saco by P. B. Newman.
1977 – Half-After Love by John Moses Pipkin.