The Brockman-Campbell Award Winners
Congratulations to Joseph Bathanti for winning the 2023 Brockman-Campbell Book Award for the best book by a North Carolina poet published during the preceding year for Light at the Seam (LSU Press). Honorable mention was awarded to Eric Nelson for Horse Not Zebra (Terrapin Books) and Katherine Soniat for Polishing the Glass Storm (LSU Press). The judge for the Brockman-Campbell Award this year was Mihaela Moscaliuc. The awards will be presented at the September 16th meeting at NC Museum of Art. We look forward to hearing the authors read their work. Congratulations to all!
Joseph Bathanti, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2012-14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, is author of twenty books, most recently, a volume of poems, Light at the Seam, from LSU Press in 2022; and The Act of Contrition & Other Stories, winner of the Eastover Prize for Fiction, from Eastover Press, published in July of 2023. Bathanti is McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.
Eric Nelson‘s most recent poetry collection, Horse Not Zebra (Terrapin Books, 2022), won the 2023 Da Vinci Eye Award for cover art and design. It also received Honorable Mention in the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in many journals, have been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily, and won a number of literary awards. He taught writing and literature courses at Georgia Southern University for twenty-six years before retiring in 2015 and moving to Asheville.
Katherine Soniat‘s eighth collection of poems—Polishing the Glass Storm—was published by LSU Press (October, 2022). Starfish Wash-Up came within a Trilogy (Fates) from Etruscan Press in May, 2023. Bright Stranger was published in 2016 (LSU PRESS). The Goodbye Animals in 2014, The Swing Girl (LSU Press) in 2011, and Notes of Departure have all won awards. She has served on the faculty at Hollins University and Virginia Tech and now lives in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
Mihaela Moscaliuc, Brockman-Campbell Award Judge for 2023, is the author of three collections of poetry, a translation of Liliana Ursu’s Clay and Star and Carmelia Leonte’s The Hiss of the Viper, co-editor of Border Lines: Poems of Migration, and editor of Insane Devotion: On the Writing of Gerald Stern. She is the translation editor for the online journal Plume and recipient of numerous literary awards.
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.
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.