Poem of the Year

POEM OF THE YEAR

Announced in 2021 and inaugurally awarded in 2022, the Missouri Review is happy to be in the position to award a cash prize of $1000 to one winner and $250 each to two runners-up for the best poem of the year, chosen by the poetry editor from the past year’s Poems of the Week. The prize is given anonymously in memory of John and Antoinette Somers, lifetime readers and longtime contributors to the magazine.

The inaugural Poem of the Year prize was Gisselle Yepes, for their poem “Not an Ode to April 22nd, 2019,” which first appeared as a Poem of the Week the week of April 19th, 2021. The runners-up were Paul Guest, for “Theories of Revenge,” and Perry Janes, for “Ode to the Community Garden, Which Is Really Just a Vacant Lot Between Apartment Buildings; or, On Spending My Last Unemployment Check.”