Fairfield poet wins award at state contest

Fairfield poet Bill Graeser has again won recognition for his poetry, earning a third-place award out of 673 entries in a contest sponsored by the Iowa Poetry Association.

His award was in the Lucille Morgan Wilson contest, one of 12 contests in the 2022 Lyrical Iowa Poetry Competition, which had 1,800 entries overall.

This is the second year in a row he has won a third-place award. In previous years he has earned a second-place award and the Norman Thomas Memorial Award.

In addition, his achievements include a nomination for a major national prize. Each year the Iowa Poetry Association selects the best 300 or so poems to include in an anthology titled “Lyrical Iowa”; of the 340 poems published last year in “Lyrical Iowa 2021,” Graeser’s third-place poem was one of just five selected to be nominated for a prestigious Pushcart Prize.

“With each poetry contest, we are astonished not only by the quantity of entries we receive—close to two thousand from across Iowa—but by the quality of the poems,” said Marilyn Baszczynski, editor of the annual ‘Lyrical Iowa’ anthology. “Our expert judges, nationally acclaimed editors and writers themselves, have commented on the difficulty of selecting only a handful of winners. Graeser’s well-crafted, spare but evocative writing has earned him multiple recognitions for the work he sends our way. We congratulate him and wish him continued success.”

Graeser, who works as the locksmith at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, has been writing poetry since 1992. In addition to “Lyrical Iowa,” his poetry has been published in the “North American Review,” “Chiron Review” and other journals.

He’s also the author of two books of poetry. Some of his poems can be found on www.billgraeser.com.

In the high school contest this year, poems by three students at Maharishi School in Fairfield were selected for inclusion in the “Lyrical Iowa 2022” anthology. Those students are Ishita Mukadam, Zoe Soares and Carlotta Kriesel.

More information about the association is available at iowapoetry.com.