John Ridland Poetry Prize

The John Ridland Poetry Prize is awarded annually for an unpublished book-length manuscript of 48-100 pages. This prize is open to poets 55 years and older. The prize includes $500, publication by Gunpowder Press, and 10 author copies. Entries accepted annually from September 1 through December 31 via Submittable.

The winner of the 2025 John Ridland Poetry Prize is Andrea Carter of San Diego, California, for her manuscript Figeater, which will be published by Gunpowder Press this year. Gunpowder’s founding editor David Starkey writes:

It’s hard to believe that this is Andrea Carter’s first book of poems, so assured are her lines, so searing her imagery. Her ear, too, registers the finest tonal shifts, creating a music that will not soon be forgotten by her readers. Carter’s poems give small things a well-earned grandeur, the way “gulls can lift / an ocean in their wings.” Gunpowder Press is delighted to bring the voice of this gifted poet to a wider audience.

Andrea is a poet and writer from Southern California. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Crab Creek Review, Amsterdam Review, Comstock Review, Terrain, SWWIM and The Florida Review. A finalist for the Bellingham Review Poetry Prize, she received the 2023 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize. She teaches at UC San Diego.

The editors also noted The Way Back by James Harms as runner-up.

Four additional finalists were:

Miracle Soap by Edison Dupree
Story of a Pilgrim by Peter Grandbois
Lost Words by Elise Hempel
Spring Branch, River by Carolyn Miller

The editors also noted the following manuscripts as semifinalists:

Look Twice by Linda Bamber
Orienteering by Michael Beebe
Wonder Body by Lisa Bellamy
Gathering Marbles by Tricia Knoll
Peripheral Outbreaks of Blue by Elizabeth Murawski
LATE by Robert McDowell
My Papers by Barry Peters
In the Café of Mistaken Orders by David J.S. Pickering
The Ghosts of 16 Larkin Street by Linda Scheller
Inventing the Ladle by Patty Seyburn
Emigrant from an Imagined Country by James Wyshynski
Faraway Rain by Lisa Zimmerman

Gunpowder Press received over 150 submissions for this national prize. Thank you to all who submitted for the opportunity to consider your work.

The inaugural winner of the John Ridland Poetry Prize was Joshua McKinney of Sacramento, California. The editors selected his manuscript Sad Animal, which was published by Gunpowder Press in July 2024. David Starkey says of the winning collection:

There are moments of dark comedy in Sad Animal, as when the speaker sits through a dull, depressing English department meeting while trying to recall the lines of Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” and who else—see “The Funeral of Shelley”—would think to rhyme “Trelawney” with “the body” of the Romantic poet, lying “serene upon a pyre.” However, this is a serious book, with McKinney tenaciously memorializing the endless variety of life on Earth. Poems focusing on the natural world are an especially notable feature of Sad Animal. The poet keenly and imaginatively observes flora and fauna, without ever conflating the human perspective with that of its subjects. Indeed, it’s rare to find a book of poetry powered by such a remarkable intelligence that also revels so sensuously in sound and imagery. McKinney is no easy optimist, but while his heart may at times be “ravening” and “parched,” ultimately in these wise and graceful poems, it “leaps // into the air.”

Joshua is the author of four previous books of poetry. His work has appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and many others. He is the recipient of The Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, The University of Georgia Press Open Competition Prize, The Dickinson Prize, The Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. He is co-editor of the online ecopoetics zine, Clade Song.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name, are as follows:

Li Po, Li Hua, and the Sophist by Peter Bethanis
Thanksgiving Dinner in a Rich Zip Code by Stephanie Brown
Sprung Loose by Sarah Carleton
Awake, Breathing by Albert Garcia
Requiem in Wide Open Minor by Justin Hunt
Standard of Care by Lynette Lamp
The Art of Skipping Stones by James Scruton
Preparing to Teach the Lesson by Barry Seller

About the Prize

Submissions for the John Ridland Poetry Prize are accepted annually from September 1-December 31. Due to our desire to respect international copyright, this prize is open to U.S. poets only.

Our Inspiration

The Ridland Prize honors poet, professor, mentor, friend, and translator John Ridland, who continued to create meaningful and elegantly-crafted work throughout his life. John Ridland was born in London in 1933 to British parents. When he was two, his family immigrated to California where he has lived most of his life. Four years at Swarthmore College were followed by two in the United States Army in Puerto Rico. In 1956 he entered graduate studies at Berkeley where he met and married Muriel Thomas from New Zealand, a fellow graduate student. In 1964 he completed a PhD from Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Ridland taught English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for forty-three years, including three years based in Melbourne as director for the UC Education Abroad Program in Australia. His book publications include A Brahms Card Ballad (2007), first published in Hungarian translation (2004), Happy in an Ordinary Thing (2013), and a book-length translation of Petöfi’s John the Valiant (1999). With his essential collaborator, Dr. Peter Czipott, Dr. Ridland has translated several other Hungarian poets, including Sándor Márai’s The Withering World (Alma Classics, 2013) and Miklos Rádnoti’s All That Still Matters at All (New American Press, 2014). In 2014 Askew Publications issued his epic poem, A. Lincolniad.