We kicked off the Best New Poets 2009 reading series up in New York with an Oct. 19 reading at Housing Works, 126 Crosby Street (http://www.housingworks.org/events/detail/best-new-poets-2009/). All sales proceeds went to support Housing Works’ mission to end homelessness and AIDS. There was standing room only thanks to the stellar efforts of the poets. They included Alex Dimitrov, Caitlin Dube, Eric Weinstein, Stephanie Rogers, Michael Grabell, Adam Giannelli, David Silverstein, Caitlin Doyle, Rebecca Keith, Caitlin Doyle, and Sally Dawidoff.

Pictured here: Caitlin Doyle.

Results

Best New Poets is pleased to announce the fifty poets selected by Kim Addonizio for the 2009 anthology:

Amanda Chiado, “Openings”
Brandon Courtney, “Memorandum for the Record”
Jamison Crabtree, “Lyric - Donst Says”
Carolyn Creedon, “Pied Beauty”
James Crews, “Sex in the Rain”
Laura Davenport, “Why We Don't Write About Kudzu”
Kelly Davio, “The Way I Remember”
Sally Dawidoff, “Night Manager”
Danielle Deulen, “My Sister Accuses Me of Leaving”
Chiara Di Lello, “Center”
Katy Didden, “String Theory: Pyramus & Thisbe”
Alex Dimitrov, “White Fire”
Benjamin Dombroski, “Elegy for the Emptied Prairie”
Caitlin Doyle, “Thirteen”
Caitlin Dube, “Self Portrait as Corpse”
Barbara Duffey, “Thought Makes Everything Fit for Use”
Adam Giannelli, “What We Know”
Jules Gibbs, “Pronghorn”
Pilar Gomez-Ibanez, “Losing Bedrock Farm”
Rae Gouirand, “January”
Michael J. Grabell, “Definition of Terms”
Warren Heiti, “From 'The Uncollected Works of Sallie Chisum'”
Sara Johnson, “How the World Was Made”
Rebecca Keith, “Epistolary”
Sally Rosen Kindred, “Common Daisy”
Brian Leary, “The Trouble with the Mind”
Keith Leonard, “A Brief History of Patience”
Jennifer Molnar, “Separation”
Trey Moody, “Climate Reply”
Amanda Moore, “Las Atlas”
Megan Moriarty, “Reasons Why the Birthday Party Was Apocalyptic”
Lauren Moseley, “Summer”
Chris Perkowski, “What Nobody Thinks of When They Think of Time Travel”
Matthew Poindexter, “Nostalgia”
Roger Reeves, “Kletic of Walt Whitman, the Wound Dresser”
Joshua Robbins, “The Man in Hopper's Office in a Small City”
Stephanie Rogers, “On the Occasion of Her Annual Disappointment”
Katie Schmid, “Jobs”
Arnold Seong, “Transplantation”
David Silverstein, “Metamorphosis”
Gretchen Steele Pratt, “Road Rising Into Deep Grass”
Melissa Stein, “Eight Questions”
Kate Sweeney, “Death of the Hired Hand, Hiawatha, Kansas”
Michael Verschelden, “American Erasure”
Tana Jean Welch, “Sometimes, The Trip Across the Continent is Enough”
Eric Weinstein, "Diagnosis"
Patrick Whitfill, “Of Your Misguided Saints”
Joe Wilkins, “Notes from the Journey Westward”
Johnathon Williams, “Dirge”
Andrea Young, “Cleopatra, Pregnant, Refuses to Let Marc Antony Leave the Bed Chamber”

We are still in the process of verifying these initial results. Eligibility rules are at www.bestnewpoets.org/eligibility.html. Please e-mail editor [at] bestnewpoets.org with any comments/concerns. Entrants will receive this information in a separate e-mail.

Anticipated Results Announcement (and blogging)

I'm starting to get questions on when we'll announce winners. Bottom line is that I hope to have the final 50 poems announced in the first weeks of August. Might be a little sooner; might be a little later. There are a lot of variables like the guest editor's time and availability, mail delays, verifying the final results--which all make it hard to give you a firm deadline. We stopped taking entries June 1, and if we email results by the first or second week in August, that's a pretty quick turnaround by litmag & contest standards, though I realize it won't feel as quick on your end of the process. We're doing what we can to finish it up as soon as possible.

This blog space is certainly faster than the old system, but I now realize it makes you sign on to provide comments. Sorry about that. Will look into a workaround. Did not mean to make it harder for non-Gmail users to post.

We're the one anthology that cheers poets becoming ineligible for future editions ... because that means they've published their first book. This week's example is Kiki Petrosino's Fort Red Border from Sarabande. Excellent publisher, excellent poetry. Her prose poem, "You Have Made a Career of Not Listening" was in BNP2006.

Best New Poets Blog Is Moving

Our old blog host was proving unreliable, so I've shifted the Best New Poets blog to bestnewpoets.blogspot.com. Our readers have finished screening the manuscripts. All of your work should now have at least one reading. If it doesn't, let me know at editor [at] bestnewpoets.org, but I think we got them all.