About
About Diann Blakely
Harriett Diann Blakely was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1957 and remained a daughter of the South throughout her life. She was an American poet, essayist, editor and critic. She taught at Belmont University, Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, The Watkins Art Institute, and served as the first poet-in-residence at the Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee. A Robert Frost Fellow and Bread Loaf, she was a Dakin Williams Fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She won two Pushcart Prizes and has been anthologized in numerous volumes, including Best American Poetry 2003. She was a recipient of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and won the 7th Annual Publication Prize from Elixir Press. Her published works including Hurricane Walk, Farwell, My Lovelies, Rain in Our Door: Duets with Robert Johnson, and Each Fugitive Moment: Essays, Memoirs, and Elegies on Lynda Hull. Sadly, her life ended all too soon in August 2014.
About the Diann Blakely Visiting Poet Fund
In her Last Will and Testament, it was her wish that the executor of her estate should give a portion of her remaining property "to a University to establish an annual poetry publication prize." In addition to the poetry prize, the fund provides financial support to host the Diann Blakely Visiting Poet each year, raising the level of interest in poetry on campus and in the wider community of Athens, Georgia through a variety of events. Finally, the fund supports the creation of this archive website that will include recordings of the visiting poet's public readings or presentations, making the content available for future research and viewing by students and scholars.
The agreement was formally adopted in September 2017 and shortly after that, the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia began the work to enact Diann's vision. The inaugural National Poetry Competition was originally postponed by the Covid-19 Pandemic, but officially began in the 2022-2023 academic year.
Professional Biography of Diann Blakely
Diann Blakely was the author of Hurricane Walk (BOA Editions, 1992), named one of the year’s ten best poetry collections by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Farewell, My Lovelies (Story Line, 2000), featured by the Academy of American Poets Book Club; and Cities of Flesh and the Dead, winner of the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award (1999) for a manuscript-in-progress and the 7th annual Elixir Book publication prize (2008). A two-time Pushcart winner and Best American Poetry 2003 includee, as well as anthologized in collections from Lights! Cameras! Poems! (ed. Jason Shinder, Anchor) and The Movies (eds. Goldstein and Konigsberg, Michigan) to Irresistible Sonnets (Headmistress Press, 2014), Orpheus and Company: Contemporary Poets on Greek Mythology (ed. Deborah DeNicola, UPNE), and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Paul Ruffin and William Wright, University of North Texas Press). Blakely served as a poetry editor at Antioch Review and New World Writing.