The Poetry Box LIVE – Prizewinners Edition!

Saturday, Feb 7, 2026 @ 1:00 PM (Pacific)

12pm (Alaskan) / 2pm (Mountain) / 3pm (Central) / 4pm (Eastern)

Featuring Winners from our 2025 Chapbook Contest

• John Arthur (NJ) – author of Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide
• Katie Dozier (TX) – author of All That Glitter
• John Wojtowicz (NJ) – author of No Lightsabers in the Kitchen
• George Bilgere (OH) — 2025 Contest Judge, Special Guest

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Grand Prize Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, DIAGRAM, Frogpond, Failbetter, trampset, ONE ART, and many other places. He has worked as a valet at a casino, a waiter, a Ferris Wheel operator, a cook, a pizza delivery driver, a fast food delivery driver, a kati roll delivery driver, a landscaper for a week or so, a journalist, an editor, a librarian, a library director, a municipal manager, and for one long, hot day as a guy going door to door asking if you’d like to donate to the Sierra Club. His band is The Deafening Colors.

You can learn more about John’s book HERE

Editor’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

Katie Dozier’s love of poetry first bloomed as a child. She memorized Robert Frost sitting on a tree stump and bathed in Edgar Allan Poe as an adolescent. While studying words at Florida State University, KHD also played with chips and became a professional poker player. She’s passionate about encouraging others to discover and share contemporary poetry, through her X account (@Katie_Dozier), her Substack, and NFTs.  KHD is the author of All That Glitter, Watering Can: a Month of Poems, and the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: a Crown of Haibun and Did You See the Moon Honey. She is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_, the haiku editor for One Art, and an editor at Rattle. Katie lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband Timothy Green, their four children, and way too many books.

You can learn more about Katie’s book HERE

Designer’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey” with his wife and two children. Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile Podcast. Several of his poems were selected for Princeton University’s 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices exhibition at the Lewis Center for the Arts. When not writing, teaching, or rolling around in the yard, he enjoys monitoring bluebird boxes, volunteering at the Cohanzick Zoo, and flipping horseshoe crabs.

You can learn more about John’s book HERE

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called George Bilgere’s work “a welcome breath of fresh, contemporary air in the house of American poetry.” Bilgere has read his poems at the Library of Congress, the 92^nd Street Y in New York, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. NPR listeners know him from his many appearances on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion. He has received grants and awards from the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation. He is a recipient of the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, the Ohioana Poetry Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. His work received the Editor’s Choice Award from the New Ohio Review in 2022, and in 2023 he won the Reader’s Choice Award from Rattle. His eighth collection of poetry, Central Air, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in March, 2022. His new book, Cheap Motels of My Youth, won the Rattle Press Chapbook Prize in 2023 and appeared in 2024.

You can learn more about George HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (Feb 7, 2026) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

About the Readers:

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders is the author of What She Was Wearing, an inspirational book of poetry/prose that reveals her #metoo secret—from survival to empowerment. Shawn’s poetry has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, CALYX, American Journal of Poetry and Poets Reading the News, and many other literary journals. She’s co-founder of The Poetry Box® press, as well as managing editor for The Poeming Pigeon.

Debbie Hall is a psychologist, photographer and writer who lives in southern California. She is thrilled that her chapbook, Falling Into The River, won third place in the 2019 Poetry Box Chapbook Prize. She feels incredibly fortunate to have had the time and means to launch a second career as a poet after retiring from psychological practice. Debbie completed her MFA in 2017 at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.

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The post Head for the Hills f. Debbie Hall & Shawn Aveningo Sanders – Nov 24 appeared first on The Poetry Box.

About the Book:

Inspired by the doctor and poet, William Carlos Williams, who wrote poetry on his prescription pad when on house calls, the poems in Notes from a Caregiver originated in waiting rooms and doctors’ offices when Meg Lindsay’s husband collapsed with multiple myeloma, a cancer, causing bone fractures. Lindsay writes of her personal journey as a caregiver, not clichés and ‘feel good’ sayings, which can be isolating and make one feel inadequate. Instead, she uses poetry to reveal authentic emotions, often odd and unpredictable, ranging from compassion to despair to anger and even to humor.

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Click HERE for more information.

The post Book Launch for “Notes from a Caregiver” – March 1 appeared first on The Poetry Box.

A Poetry Box Chapbook Prize Winner – First Place, 2019

Moroccan Holiday is a poetic series following a married couple—an American woman, and her Scottish husband—on an extended vacation in Morocco. As the husband suffers an extreme alcoholic relapse, the couple confronts longstanding issues of disease, abuse, and painful family memories, against the rich backdrop of an unfamiliar culture.

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“Lauren Tivey embarks on a trip to Morocco, a foreign landscape of exciting people, smells, and destinations, with her alcoholic husband. She carries with her a dread of what she may face with her husband’s disease in a Muslim country. In beautifully-executed and moving poetic forms, she takes the reader with her through the landscapes of Ramadan and his alcoholism, family histories with drunkenness and rehab, and her moments of stillness when she is alone with mint tea and her journal. We feel how hard it is to stuff love, fear, and compassion in a suitcase just to unpack again in a new port of call.”

~ Tricia Knoll, Contest Judge, 2019
author of How I Learned to Be White and Broadfork Farm

The post Book Launch for “Moroccan Holiday” – Jan 28 appeared first on The Poetry Box.

A Poetry Box Chapbook Prize Winner – First Place, 2019

Moroccan Holiday is a poetic series following a married couple—an American woman, and her Scottish husband—on an extended vacation in Morocco. As the husband suffers an extreme alcoholic relapse, the couple confronts longstanding issues of disease, abuse, and painful family memories, against the rich backdrop of an unfamiliar culture.

~~~~~

“Lauren Tivey embarks on a trip to Morocco, a foreign landscape of exciting people, smells, and destinations, with her alcoholic husband. She carries with her a dread of what she may face with her husband’s disease in a Muslim country. In beautifully-executed and moving poetic forms, she takes the reader with her through the landscapes of Ramadan and his alcoholism, family histories with drunkenness and rehab, and her moments of stillness when she is alone with mint tea and her journal. We feel how hard it is to stuff love, fear, and compassion in a suitcase just to unpack again in a new port of call.”

~ Tricia Knoll, Contest Judge, 2019
author of How I Learned to Be White and Broadfork Farm

The post Book Signing for “Moroccan Holiday” – Jan 25 appeared first on The Poetry Box.