2025 Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize Winner

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Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize

The Creative Writing Program is delighted to announce this year’s Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize winner. Out of the 36 applicants, one winner was selected by alumna Claire Cronin. Below, meet our winning poet and read Claire Cronin's comments on their submission.

Alec Siek with his poem "bar joke."

Alec SiekAbout the work:
Like the title implies, this poem starts with a joke but then ventures into surreal, absurdist territory. We end up with a holy cow and Christ on the cross. The poem offers readers a sly metaphysics; not solemn, but still serious. It’s a tiny, curious story in the eerie comic mode of James Tate. It’s simple but compressed, like the doubled symbolism of dreams. And all this is done very briefly, with lines that stumble forward towards a punchline ending. It makes you want to start the poem over again to find your bearings and feel the pleasure of each turn.

Alec Siek is a senior at UGA majoring in English and Religion. Outside of the classroom, he can be found behind the bar at Sunroof Coffee or performing around Athens with his band Roommate. 

Claire CroninAbout this year's judge:

Claire Cronin is a writer and musician from California.

Her weird nonfiction book, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God, was published by Repeater Books in 2020. A French translation, Les Écrans Sanglants: Cinéma d'horreur, mysticisme & regard féminin, was published in 2024 by Le Gospel. She is also the author of the poetry chapbooks A Spirit is a Mood Without a Body (Salt Hill, 2018) and Therese (HNGMN Books, 2014).

As a musician, Cronin has released records on independent labels and toured nationally. Her most recent albums are Bloodless (Orindal Records, 2021), Big Dread Moon (Orindal, 2019), and Came Down a Storm (Ba Da Bing, 2016).

Claire has an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia.

Type of news:
General
Creative Writing Program

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