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Poetry Shortlist

2022 Poetry Shortlist

We’re excited to announce the shortlist for the 2022 Indiana Authors Awards in the poetry category! Congratulations to the following Hoosier authors and their books: 

Kaveh Akbar, West Lafayette, for Pilgrim Bell, a collection of poems that take readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal by daring to exist in the empty spaces where song lives.

Marianne Boruch, West Lafayette, for Bestiary Dark, poems that offer up strange and sweet details as well as beauty and impending doom while wrestling with the question of the world’s finite nature.

Ross Gay, Bloomington, for Be Holding, a lyrical love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving — known as Dr. J — and how the imagination might bring us closer to each other.

Adrian Matejka, Indianapolis, for Somebody Else Sold the World, poems that meditate on the ways we exist in an uncontrollable world: in love and its aftermaths, in families that divide themselves, in protest-filled streets, in isolation as routines become obsolete because of lockdown orders and curfews.

Mark Neely, Muncie, for Ticker, a collection of poems that follows the life of its main character as he navigates marriage, children, aging parents, politics, race, religion, global catastrophe and the irrelevance of middle age.

Keep up with the other shortlist announcements here, and on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.