We are very pleased to announce that the wonderfully jarring, original (what a voice!) Nova, by Dana Jaye Cadman, has been selected as the winning manuscript for this year’s 42 Miles Press Poetry Award!
Please join us in congratulating Dana on this achievement. Dana’s book will appear in the fall of 2026, coupled with a public reading on the campus of Indiana University South Bend.
Read a sample poem from Nova below. We’re also posting the finalist list again, with our thanks to everyone who submitted this year.
Dana Jaye Cadman is a poet, writer, and visual artist. She was born in Florida and grew up between Long Island and Upstate New York. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Rutgers-Newark and is an Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Pace University, Pleasantville. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Allium, Conduit Magazine, Dialogist, Four Way Review, New England Review, North American Review, PRISM International, Raleigh Review, Southeast Review, The Glacier, The Saturday Evening Post, Third Coast Magazine, Vassar Review, and elsewhere, and has placed as finalist in the Jake Adam York Prize, Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and Georgia Poetry Prize, Barry Hannah Prize for Fiction: Radical Futurism, Third Coast Poetry Contest, Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, and Harbor Editions Laureate Prize, and shortlisted for the Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Novels. Nominations include Best Small Fictions for “The Machine” Okay Donkey Magazine and Best of the Net “Juniper” Pacifica Magazine. More at danajaye.com
Corpse The moon is doing that thing where you can see the dark parts of her body. Phantom. Shadow takes spotlight. The stars, if you unfocus, have pulses. Jupiter rips the dark mechanism of sky. Cornea. Light. You can tell re from a rock by the heartbeat. Heat flutters. That's how to find the planets in the night. It's hard to tell a meteor from a moth against the streetlamp periphery. Silhouettes. Still, the Perseids persist. The crescent never has been so slight before, has it? The stars turn off and on. Christmas garland coiling the abyss. Blackness, blackness, and then this. The moon continues to forget herself. Now she’s all almost gone: ash body of the cigarette. Remainder, reminder, I shouldn’t say corpse. I smoke everything I have to burn today. Delete you from the cell phone, the memory of my kitchen. The carpet, the window, the cats. from Atlanta Review (Finalist- International Poetry Competition)
We’d like to thank all of our contestants, editors, readers, and everyone who continues to support 42 Miles Press and The 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. Please join us in congratulating our winner, Dana Jaye Cadman, our runners-up: Michelle Alexander, Mary Ardery, and Bruce Bond, and all of our incredible finalists.
The 2024 42 Miles Poetry Award Finalists
Dana Jaye Cadman: Nova (Winner)
Michelle Alexander: Mistook for Language (First runner-up)
Mary Ardery: Vigil (Second runner-up)
Bruce Bond: Fathom (Third runner-up)
Aimee Noel: Continue as Guest
Judy Ireland: How to Drag the River for Your Own Body
Kai-Lilly Karpman: The Life Cycle of Cruelty
Justin Hunt: Requiem in Wide-Open Minor
Patty Seyburn: Amulet, Cruller, Pelican, Kumquat
Jennifer S Flescher: You Will Not be in My Obituary
Steve Langan: Wash N Fold
Lesle Lewis: Wolf
Dalton Day: Our Immoveable Error
Joseph Goosey: Climate Denial for Lovers
Ned Balbo: Oblivion’s Heros
Liza Wolf-Francis: Body Cartography
C. Mikal Oness: Works and Days
Sarah Elkins: A Suggestion of Fishes
Kevin Clark: Beyond Reach
Maureen Mulhern: Covenant
Emily Banks: Doll Fire
David Hopes: North-flowing River
Babette Cieskowski: Blood in the Garden
Arthur Vogelsang: Smooth Side, Rough Side
Talia Bloch: How We Keep Each Other Company
bill rector: Windsock After a Rocket
John Tobin: Willowwacks
Edison Dupree: Miracle Soap
Matthew Valades: Animosity Garden
Kate Northrup: As for the Day after Tomorrow, This Is the Day after Tomorrow
Gigi Marks: Wake robin
Ruth Williams: Projective Force
Philip Sterling: Words Frequently Confused
Daniel Coudriet: Museum People
Ben Pease: Death Refractions
Lane Falcon: Deep, Blue Odds
Nicelle Davis: How Does Your Garden Grow?
Ashley Kunsa: The Middle Deep
Jerome Gagnon: The Light that Shines in Everything: New and Selected Poems
Andrew Cox: My National Anthem is an Elegy
Elizabeth Knapp: Happy Monday from My Skull
Peter Krumbach: Yes and Nightshirt
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