The Annette Allen Poetry Prize
Dr. Annette Allen genuinely made the world a better place. She not only shared her art and insight through her poetry and research, but she also willingly shared with us her spirit of joy and creativity—her eternal wonder at the gift of imagination. In creating the Humanities Ph.D. program at UofL, Dr. Allen infused kindness, contemplation, critique, and camaraderie into the spaces of Belknap Campus. There's nothing we can say that will capture the essence of all that Dr. Allen did for us as graduate students, colleagues, friends, and loved ones, but what we can do is carry her spirit with us every day and share it with the rest of the world.
In order to honor and promote Dr. Annette Allen’s passions of creativity, interdisciplinarity, and mentorship, the graduate student organization AHA (Association of Humanities Academics) at University of Louisville announces The Annette Allen Poetry Prize.* This Prize is stewarded by AHA, with support from the UofL Comparative Humanities Department and the Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society, as well as UofL Alumni and Friends of the Humanities.
The Annette Allen Poetry Prize is dedicated above all to honoring the life and lasting impact of Dr. Allen. All donations collected for the Prize will go toward funding an annual Poetry Competition, open to students from all colleges and Universities in the Louisville and surrounding areas. It is our most fervent hope that this generous Prize will inspire and excite college students who might not otherwise have thought about committing the time and energy to produce meaningful creative work during the course of their studies.
To learn more about the prize and see the Call for Entries, please visit the official website here.
Poetry exists all around us, and like Dr. Allen, this Prize intends to encourage it to manifest and shine upon us in the same way that her light so brilliantly illuminated—and continues to illuminate—all it touched.
*AHA is a graduate student organization devoted to promoting social, cultural, creative, and intellectual growth in our student body, as well as in the communities around us, through Interdisciplinary Humanities programming, education, events, and continued discourse. For more information on AHA, or to inquire about the Prize, please visit our website.