JUDGES OF THE PRIZE FOR THE 21 BEST PRINTED POETRY BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, IN ENGLISH

Here is the list and biographical information for the international judging panel* for this important prize. Eyewear is very grateful to these international adjudicators, for their unpaid time and dedication:

AGNIESZKA STUDSZINSKA - Agnieszka Studzinska has an MA in Creative Writing from the UEA. Her first debut collection, Snow Calling was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award 2010. Her second collection, What Things Are is published by Eyewear [2014]. She is currently working on her third collection of poetry as well as her PhD at Royal Holloway.

ALEX HOUEN - bio here: https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/people/Alex.Houen/

ANTHONY CALESHU - bio here: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/anthony-caleshu

CATE MYDDLETON-EVANS -

Cate Myddleton-Evans has worked previously as Managing Editor and Editor for Eyewear, including work on Keaton Henson's poetry collection Idiot Verse, and being a contributing editor to the global anthology The Poet's Quest for God. She graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English Literature, and has loved poetry since childhood. 

.

 CLEA ROBERTS - Clea Roberts lives on the outskirts of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. She was born in North Vancouver, British Columbia, but Whitehorse has been her home for the past 15 years. Her debut collection of poems, Here Is Where We Disembark (Freehand Books, 2010) was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada, was nominated for the ReLit Award and was published in German (Edition Rugerup, 2013) and Japanese (Shichosha 2017). Clea’s poems have been published in journals and anthologies in Canada, Europe, the United States and Australia. She has received fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, Vermont Studio Centre, the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and is a five-time recipient of the Yukon Government Advanced Artist Award. Clea facilitates a workshop on poetry and grief through Hospice Yukon and is the Artistic Director of the Kicksled Reading Series. Auguries, her second collection of poetry, was published by Brick Books in Spring 2017.

COLETTE SENSIER -  A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2004. Colette’s pamphlet How Many Camels Is Too Many? was published by holdfirepress in 2012. She has had poems in Salt’s Best British Poetry 2011, The Salt Book of Younger Poets and Eyewear Publishing’s Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam, among others. Colette was runner-up in the inaugural Melita Hume Poetry Prize in 2012. Eyewear published her debut collection Skinless soon after. Colette was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2004 and Commended in 2005 & 2006. She also won First Prize in the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize in 2006.

DAVID MUSGRAVE - Australian poet, novelist, and publisher David Musgrave was born in Sydney and earned a PhD at Sydney University. With wryness and precision, Musgrave writes long, formally complex poems that use human relationships, personal and literary history, and observations of the natural world. In the Mascara Literary Review, poet Kylie Rose observed of Musgrave’s book Phantom Limb: “Systems, order and logic underpin Musgrave’s body of work. His is an exquisitely constructed and formulated world, where painful emotional states are discharged by creating movement in the reader’s imagination through language and form.” Musgrave is the author of several poetry collections, including To Thalia (2004), Watermark (2006), and Phantom Limb (2009), as well as the satirical novel Glissando (2010). Musgrave founded the Australian literary publisher Puncher & Wattmann. His honors include the Sidney Nolan Gallery Poetry Prize, the Broadway Poetry Prize, the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize, the Alec Bolton Prize, the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. He lives in Sydney. .

 DAVID WHEATLEY - bio here: ttps://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/people/profiles/d.wheatley

 DIANE BRADY - Diane Brady became a journalist at 15 to meet her favorite band. She’s since reported from seven continents for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal and Maclean’s, among others, winning an eclectic mix of honors from two national magazine awards in Canada to a gold medal from the Dog Writers Association of America. Her book Fraternity was named one of Amazon’s best books of 2012 and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She’s working on another book, along with other ventures, and regularly attempts to make sense of U.S. business as a contributor to the BBC.

DUSTIN PEARSON - BIO FORTCOMING.

EDWARD RAGG - Edward Ragg is a British poet and wine educator who, since 2007, has lived in Beijing. He was a 2012 Cinnamon Press Poetry Award winner and his first volume was A Force That Takes (2013). His second collection, Holding Unfailing (2017), is also published by Cinnamon Press. Ragg’s work has been anthologised in the 2014 Forward Book of Poetry (Faber, 2013), Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (Cinnamon/Eyewear, 2012), New Poetries IV (Carcanet, 2007) and elsewhere. He is author of Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction (CUP, 2010) and also co-founded Dragon Phoenix Wine Consulting in 2007.

 ILYA KAMINSKY - Kaminsky is the author of Dancing in Odessa (2004), which won the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, and ForeWord Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award, and has been translated into French and Romanian. Traveling Musicians (2007) is a selection of his poems originally written in Russian.  He co-edited, with Susan Harris, the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (2010), and edited and co-translated Polina Barskova’s This Lamentable City (2010). He has also served as the editor of the online journal In Posse Review. Kaminsky’s honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Milton Center’s Award for Excellence in Writing, the Florence Kahn Memorial Award, Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize as well as their Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Philips Exeter Academy’s George Bennett Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation fellowship.

JAN OWEN - Jan Owen is a South Australian writer whose seventh book, The Offhand Angel, was published n London by Eyewear Publishing in 2015. Her volume of translations from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal was published in the same year by Arc Publications and a book of satirical limericks, The Wicked Flowers of Charles Baudelaire, came out with Shoestring Press in 2016. She has received various awards including the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize and the 2016 Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.

JENNIFER K. DICK - Jennifer K Dick, is a writer, translator, teacher and literary events organizer originally from Iowa who now resides in France. She is the author of CIRCUITS (Corrupt, 2013), ENCLOSURES (BlazeVox eBook, 2007), FLUORESCENCE (University of GA Press, 2004), and 6 chapbooks, most recently Afterlife by Angel House Press, Canada (2017) and Comme Un n°9, a collective work with 4 Japanese artists (2017). Jennifer is also the editor of two critical books on translation theory in the social sciences and translates French poets. She has been curating Ivy Writers Paris bilingual reading series since 2005 and the Ecrire l’Art mini-residency for French authors at La Kunsthalle-Mulhouse since 2010. Her increasing interest in collaborative projects with other authors, artists and dancers led to a 2016-2017 architecture-text installation at the Basel SBB Train Station in Switzerland and the 75 minute live show Traces de son amant qui s’en va (May 2015). She is part of Le Collectif with Italian and French poets from which the 2013 Benway Series Foglio 9 was published and 2 films, one in which she reads, Le Moulin by Gilles Weinzaepflan, 2013, (https://vimeo.com/101581345). Her poem Radial filmed by Lisa Pasold is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhFqjW0hruw New work appears in Parentheses (Barcelona), Tears in The Fence (UK), and in the women: poetry: migration anthology from Theenk publishers, NY. Jennifer currently teaches for the Université de Haute Alsace and Kent University UK's Paris MFA program. 

JOHN GREENING - John Greening's many collections include To the War Poets (Carcanet, 2013), Heath (with Penelope Shuttle) from Nine Arches, and Hunts: Poems 1979-2009 (Greenwich Exchange). In 2015 his classical music anthology Accompanied Voices appeared along with a landmark OUP edition of Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War. 2017 sees publication of his edition of Geoffrey Grigson's poetry and a memoir of two years living in Upper Egypt. His collected essays and reviews, Vapour Trails, appear from Eyewear next year. A Cholmondeley Award recipient, he reviews poetry for the TLS and has been an Eric Gregory judge for ten years. He is currently RLF Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge.

 KATE NOAKES - Kate Noakes is an elected member of the Welsh Academy of Letters and her website (www.boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com) is archived by the National Library of Wales. She has published six collections of poetry, most recently Paris, Stage Left (Eyewear, 2017). She lives and writes in London.

 KAVITA A. JINDAL - Kavita A. Jindal is a prize-winning fiction writer, as well as a poet, essayist and reviewer. She is the author of ‘Raincheck Renewed’, published to critical acclaim by Chameleon Press. Her work has appeared in journals, anthologies and newspapers around the world and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and European cultural radio stations. Selected poems have been translated into Arabic, German, Punjabi, Spanish and Romanian. She is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani collective and a Senior Editor at Asia Literary Review.

 KIMBERLY CAMPANELLO - Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana, and is a dual American and Irish citizen based in the UK. Her poetry books include Imagines (New Dublin Press), Strange Country (The Dreadful Press), Consent (Doire Press) and Hymn to Kālī (Eyewear Publishing). MOTHERBABYHOME is forthcoming from zimZalla Avant Objects. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University.

MARIA APICHELLA - bio here: https://mariaapichella.com/

MARIELA GRIFFOR - bio here: www.marielagriffor.com

MARK YAKICH - Dr. Mark Yakich is the Gregory F. Curtin, S.J., Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, where he is also editor of New Orleans Review. He is the winner of a National Poetry Series award and a Fulbright Fellowship, and has published books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and pedagogy. His most recent books are an unconventional guide to reading and writing poems, Poetry: A Survivor's Guide (Bloomsbury), and the collection The Dangerous Book of Poetry for Planes (Eyewear).

NIGEL MCLOUGHLIN - bio here: http://www.glos.ac.uk/academic-schools/liberal-and-performing-arts/staff-profiles/pages/s2106065-nigel-mcloughlin.aspx

PATRICK CHAPMAN - Patrick Chapman’s first poetry collection appeared in 1991 from Raven Arts Press, Dublin. He has published six further collections including Slow Clocks of Decay (Salmon, 2016). His other books include the novel So Long Napoleon Solo (BlazeVOX, 2017). He has written an award-winning short film; many episodes of children’s television; and the audio dramas Doctor Who: Fear of the Daleks (Big Finish, 2007) and Dan Dare: Operation Saturn (B7, 2017). He was the producer on B7’s award-winning dramatisations for BBC Radio 4: Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles; and Eyewear author Sumia Sukkar’s The Boy From Aleppo Who Painted the War. Chapman lives in Dublin where, with poet Dimitra Xidous, he is a founder editor of The Pickled Body.

PHILIP HIEBERT - bio forthcoming.

REBECCA GAYLE HOWELL - Rebecca Gayle Howell is the author of American Purgatory and Render / an Apocalypse, and the translator of Amal al-Jubouri's verse memoir of the Iraq War, Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation. Her awards include The Sexton Prize, fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center and the Carson McCullers Center, and a Pushcart Prize, and since 2014 she has edited poetry for the Oxford American. Howell is the James Still Writer-in-Residence at the Hindman Settlement School. She lives with her family in Knott County, Kentucky. 

 RISHI DASTIDAR - Rishi Dastidar's poetry has been published by the Financial Times, Tate Modern and the Southbank Centre amongst many others, and has featured in the anthologies Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins) and Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe). A fellow of The Complete Works, the Arts Council England funded programme for BAME poets in the UK, he is a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine, a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective, and also serves as a chair of the writer development organization Spread The Word. His debut collection Ticker-tape is published by Nine Arches Press.

 SEAN SINGER - Sean Singer is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; and Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and two chapbooks, Passport (Beard of Bees, 2007) and Keep Right on Playing Through the Mirror Over the Water (Beard of Bees, 2010). He has an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Rutgers-Newark  He drives a taxi in New York City. 

SHANTA ACHARYA - Shanta Acharya won a scholarship to Oxford, where she was among the first batch of women admitted to Worcester College in 1979. A recipient of the Violet Vaughan Morgan Fellowship, she was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy for her work on Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English and American Literature and Languages at Harvard University before moving to London, where she has lived since. The author of eleven books, her publications range from poetry, literary criticism and fiction to finance. Her latest book, Imagine: New and Selected Poems, is published by HarperCollins (India). www.shantaacharya.com


TIM DOOLEY - Tim Dooley’s most recent collections are The Sound We Make Ourselves: Poems 1971-2016 and Weemoed, both published by Eyewear. His reviews of poetry appear in the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London and Long Poem Magazine. He has written obituaries for The Times and was reviews editor for Poetry London from 2008 to 2017. He teaches poetry at the Poetry School and at the University of Westminster.

TOBY MARTINEZ DE LAS RIVAS - bio here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/toby-martinez-de-las-rivas

UMIT SINGH DHUGA - U. S. Dhuga was trained as a Classical Philologist at Columbia University, where he earned his PhD in 2006. His first book, Choral Identity and the Chorus of Elders in Greek Tragedy, was published through Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies in 2011. Dhuga’s classical music criticism, literary criticism, and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker (where he worked as an opera reviewer), The Hudson Review, PN Review, and elsewhere. Founder and Publisher of The Battersea Review, Dhuga’s new book is a collection of poetry, The Sight of a Goose Going Barefoot (March 2017, Eyewear Publishing).

USHA KISHORE - bio here: www.ushakishore.co.uk

ZATA BANKS - BIO FORTCHOMING.

* We are hoping to add a few more judges before Christmas. The list will never be less than 30.