FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – It’s April again, and for some poetry lovers it’s the “cruelest month,” to quote T. S. Eliot, but for most poetry lovers across the country April means National Poetry Month, and the University of Arkansas Press is celebrating with a poetry sale.

The press has a long tradition of publishing poetry, ever since poet Miller Williams became the press’s first director in 1980. It didn’t take Williams long to start bringing out excellent collections by some of America’s finest poets. In 1982 the press published its first two poetry books – Ron Koertge’s Life on the Edge of the Continent and Sara Henderson Hay’s Story Hour.

Over the next few years it would publish collections by John Ciardi, George Garrett, R.S. Thomas, Leon Stokesbury, and in 1988 a first book by a middle-aged poet by the name of Billy Collins, who was about to give up on finding a publisher until Williams said, “I like your work and we’ll publish your book.” The Apple That Astonished Paris came out in 1988 and remains to this day the press’s best selling poetry book. Collins went on to become U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and 2002.

The press has continued the tradition of fine poetry publishing with its Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer. In the past few years, collections published in the series have garnered some very nice awards, such as the coveted annual Kate Tufts Discovery Award for the best first collection of the year, won in 2005 by Patrick Phillips for Chattahoochee. Other recent prize-winning collections include Christopher Bursk’s The First Inhabitants of Arcadia, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; Elizabeth Hadaway’s Fire Baton and R. T. Smith’s Outlaw Style, both winners of the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize; Elton Glaser’s Here and Hereafter, winner of the Ohioana Library Association Award; and Michelle Boisseau’s Trembling Air, a PEN USA Finalist. According to Tom Lavoie, marketing and sales director for the press, the press has been informed that another of its books, James Allen Hall’s Now You’re the Enemy, has just won a prize, but it won’t be officially announced by the awarding organization until the end of April.

The press has also had great success with its poets being selected by Garrison Keillor for a reading of one of their poems on his daily Writer’s Almanac radio show on NPR. In just the past few months Keillor has read poems from press books by Jo McDougall—different poems on consecutive days—Michelle Boisseau, William Trowbridge, Dannye Romine Powell, and Billy Collins, on Collins’ birthday.

This summer the press will award its first annual $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Four manuscripts that were submitted in September and October of 2008 will be chosen as finalists. The press will publish all four but only one will be the inaugural prize winner. In addition to the prize money, the winner will by invited to give a featured reading at a future Arkansas Festival of Writers, sponsored by the University of Arkansas Master of Fine Arts and Translation Program. According to Lavoie, the press received a record number of submissions and the pile is getting smaller and smaller as the best manuscripts begin to emerge. “This prize is a major development for the press,” said Lavoie. “It places us solidly among nationally recognized poetry prizes and will help us attract even more outstanding manuscripts.”

And then there’s the big poetry sale. All of the press’s poetry titles, including anthologies and literary criticism, will be on sale throughout April at discounts of 20 percent, with nearly 100 other titles at a special price of only $5 each. There’s also a special flat shipping rate of just $5 regardless of how many books a person orders. The sale can be accessed on the press Web site at: http://www.uapress.com/geninfo/09poetrysale.html. Sale orders will only be taken over the phone: 479-575-5538 or 1-800-626-0090.  

And so, sometime this month, do as Billy Collins suggests in his famous “Introduction to Poetry,” from The Apple That Astonished Paris: “Take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide / or press an ear against its hive.”