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Harriett Diann Blakely was an American poet, essayist, editor and critic. She taught at Belmont University, Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, The Watkins Art Institute, and served as the first poet-in-residence at the Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee. A Robert Frost Fellow and Bread Loaf, she was a Dakin Williams Fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She won two Pushcart Prizes and has been anthologized in numerous volumes, including Best American Poetry 2003. She was a recipient of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and won the 7th Annual Publication Prize from Elixir Press. Her published works including Hurricane Walk, Farwell, My Lovelies, Rain in Our Door: Duets with Robert Johnson, and Each Fugitive Moment: Essays, Memoirs, and Elegies on Lynda Hull. Sadly, her life ended all too soon in August 2014.
In her Last Will and Testament, it was her wish that the executor of her estate should give a portion of her remaining property "to a University to establish an annual poetry publication prize." In addition to the poetry prize, the fund provides financial support to host the Diann Blakely Visiting Poet each year, raising the level of interest in poetry on campus and in the wider community of Athens, Georgia through a variety of events. The Blakely Archive was established this year to catalogue each visiting poet and winning poem, in accordance with her wishes. Visit The Blakely Archive
2024-2025 Diann Blakely Visiting Poet & Judge
Vivek Narayanan
Vivek Narayanan’s most recent books of poems are After (New York Review Books / HarperCollins India, 2022) and The Kuruntokai and its Mirror (Hanuman Editions, 2024). His work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry. He has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute and at the New York Public Library and teaches in the MFA Poetry program at George Mason University.
Vivek Narayanan by Deepankar Gohain
2024-2025 Winning Poem
Selected by Vivek Narayanan
"Shade or The Revelation of All Our Neighbourhood Has Lost"
by Sihle Ntuli
in our neighbourhood the roosters have chosen silence, refusing to receive the glorious rise of the morning sun with us. it has been so long since we heard the sound of crowing, the generation who formed a bond with trees remain haunted by tree stumps; my grandmother among them. often i have heard it said, that the living keep the spirit of the dead with them, holding it inside, here, there & everywhere. in our neighbourhood, only the sound system refuses to die, the presence of an elder no longer lulls loud subwoofers to sleep; & this is how we lose them some of us will say. in isiZulu, the word for shade & dignity is one & the same, the gathered wood we chopped down in silver, another time we fell short. & this is how we surrendered them, because our minds were too stubborn to yield, with a passion so warm it burnt, as if harsh rays of the sun would never hurt us again, so forgetful, that even the trees serve a purpose
Sihle Ntuli is a poet, classicist and editor from Durban, South Africa.
He received his Master of Arts in Classical Civilizations from Rhodes University, where he briefly lectured Classics at the University of the Free State and the University of Johannesburg. His writing has been supported by the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies in South Africa and the Centre for Stories in Australia through the JIAS Fellowship & Patricia Kailis Fellowship respectively. He also served as the editor-in-chief of South Africa’s oldest literary magazine New Contrast in 2023. He is a 2024 Best of the Net poetry winner and a Pushcart prize nominee. His poems have appeared in ADDA stories, Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks; Rumblin (uHlanga 2020) and The Nation (River Glass Books 2023) alongside three full length collections Stranger (Aerial Publishing 2015) and Zabalaza Republic (Botsotso Publishing 2023) and his third collection Owele will be released by uHlanga press in July 2025.
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