The 2024 ONLY POEMS Prize Winners
POET OF THE YEAR
Awarded $3000
Sydney Mayes is a poet from Denver, Colorado. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, Gulf Coast Journal, Denver Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poets.org, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. Mayes is the Executive Editor of Nashville Review and a finalist for the 2024 Furious Flower Prize.
POET OF THE YEAR RUNNERS-UP
Awarded $300 each
xochi quetzali cartland is a queer & latina poet, seamstress, & transformative justice practitioner living in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in Common Ground Review, Muzzle Magazine, Little Patuxent Review & elsewhere, as well as supported with fellowships from National Arts Strategies & Brooklyn Poets.
Nome Emeka Patrick is a Nigerian poet, and Cave Canem fellow. His works have been published or forthcoming in POETRY, AGNI, The Journal, Narrative, TriQuarterly, Waxwing, Hayden's ferry Review, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. He has an MFA from Brown University and is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the poetry editor at Agbowo.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Awarded $55 each
Tara Mesalik MacMahon is the winner of the 2024 James Hearst Poetry Prize (North American Review). Her debut collection, Barefoot Up the Mountain, won the Open Country Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems also appear in Nimrod, Poet Lore, Jabberwock Review, Red Hen Press’s New Moons and elsewhere. Tara calls an island in the Salish Sea home, where she lives with her husband and their rescue dog.
Read Tara’s poetry and interview on Nov 25, 2024
Tom Snarsky is the author of Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water, both from Ornithopter Press. His book A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems is forthcoming from Animal Heart Press in 2025. He lives with his wife Kristi and their cats in the mountains of northwestern Virginia.
Read Tom’s poetry and interview on Nov 11, 2024