Uncategorized | March 08, 2016

For the past few weeks, we have been featuring narrative accounts “from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak—the 2015 winners and runners-up in Prose, Poetry, Audio Documentary, and Humor of our Miller Audio Prize. Today we hear from our first-place winner in Audio Documentary, Karen Brown, and our runner-up winner in Poetry, Kai Carlson-Wee. Here is what they have to say about their experiences:

Karen Brown:

“Winning the Audio Documentary prize was a true honor. Not only was it extremely flattering to be associated with The Missouri Review (we audio producers consider ourselves to be ‘literary’ but it’s nice to borrow legitimacy from the experts), but the contest podcast also provided a great opportunity to have a piece that I labored over — a labor of love, of course –- reach a new audience.”

You can check out Karen’s award-winning piece here.

Kai Carlson-Wee:

“I’ve always been a fan of poets who broke the rules, who pushed their work in formal directions away from the limits of the page. You don’t have to dig very deep to find Allen Ginsberg’s famous recording of Howl, Paul Muldoon’s lyrics in a Warren Zevon song, Matthew Dickman’s influence on a Super Bowl commercial, or Claudia Rankine’s recent experiments with poetry video. The Miller Audio Prize is sort of the literary contest equivalent of a rule-breaker: it challenges poets to think outside the box and to remember that, at its deepest root, poetry is an oral form—it is meant to be read out-loud. The brevity, rhythm, attention to sound, all make it more closely related to song than to something defined by a book. Receiving the runner-up slot for the Miller Prize was definitely a huge honor (and the cash didn’t hurt) but what was more significant was the validation that my weird experiments with poetry and music were contributing something of value. I’m not suggesting you submit to this prize for the prize itself, but instead for the joy of hearing your valved voice and the challenge of breaking your poetry free from the page.”

Listen to Kai’s award-winning poetry here!

Want to join them as prize winners? There is one week left to submit to our 2016 Miller Audio Prize! The guidelines are here, and the deadline is March 15^th. We can’t wait to listen!