Winner of the 2010 Omnidawn CHAPBOOK Poetry Prize:

The Man Who Lost His Head

by Zach Savich

Selected by Elizabeth Robinson

To be published by Omnidawn in 2010

Zach Savich’s first book, Full Catastrophe Living, won the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize and received a New American Poet honor from the Poetry Society of America. His second, Annulments, won the 2010 Colorado Prize for Poetry, selected by Donald Revell. His poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in many journals, including Boston Review, Kenyon Review, A Public Space, Denver Quarterly, and Poetry Northwest.

A recipient of a BA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Savich has lived and taught in Italy, France, New Zealand, and around the US. He currently teaches and studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he helps organize the jubilat/Jones Reading Series.

Here are the five finalists, selected by Elizabeth Robinson:

(Listed in alphabetical order by the poets’ last names. There is no ranking order for our finalists)

The City Salutes Itself, by Jackie Clark (Jersey City, NJ)

verbs without a past, by Robin Powlesland (Taos, NM)

Dogbook, by Kate Schapira  (Providence, RI)

Quarry, by Shannon Tharp (Seattle, WA)

Break-Night Dawn, by Erin Wilson (Berkeley, CA)

Ben Lerner will judge the 2011 Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. We will be accepting electronic and postal submissions: 3/1/11 to 6/30/11. More information about this contest will be available in the coming months.