Uncategorized | August 08, 2005

Every once in a while, we get to celebrate one of our own. In this case, it’s a unique literary double-celebration.

Steve Gehrke, poetry editor of the Missouri Review, and his wife, Nadine Meyer, have both been selected as winners in the 2005 National Poetry Series Open Competition. Gehrke’s book, Michelangelo’s Seizure, was selected by T.R. Hummer and will be published by University of Illinois Press. Meyer’s book, The Anatomy Theater, was selected by John Koethe and will be published by HarperCollins Press.

This will be Gehrke’s third book. Previously, The Pyramids of Malpighi (Anhinga Press, 2004) won the 2002 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry, and The Resurrection Machine (BkMk Press, 2000) won the 1999 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. Other recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Slate, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, The Sun and The Georgia Review.

This will be Meyer’s first book. Her poem, “The Flayed Man,” was awarded a 2004 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Another poem, “Dancing at the Moulin Rouge,” was first runner-up in the Wisdom Poetry Contest sponsored by The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society.

It has been a big year for Gehrke and Meyer, both Ph.D. students at the University of Missouri-Columbia. They are also expecting their first child.

Two recent contributors to the Missouri Review are past National Poetry Series winners: Jeffrey Harrison, whose poems are forthcoming in the fall issue, won in 1987, for his book The Singing Underneath, and Robert Gibb, whose poems appeared most recently in TMR 27:3 (2004), won for The Origins of Evening in 1997.

For more than 25 years, the National Poetry Series has sponsored the publication of poetry, both by new and established poets. Marie Howe, Denis Johnson, Laura Mullen, and Sherod Santos are just a few of the poets whose first books found publication with the support of the NPS. Mark Doty won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his 1992 winning manuscript, My Alexandria. Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, was selected for The National Poetry Series in 1990 for his book, Questions About Angels.