This week on My Poetic Side, we look at the winner of the Pushcart Prize, and we also have news about the 2025 Foley Poetry Contest

Prestigious Pushcart Prize Awarded to Professor Heather Treseler

Worcester State professor Heather Treseler won the Pushcart Prize for her poem “Purpura”. The poem, which is just 28 lines long, is described as completely immersive and shows the reader a complex mother-daughter relationship.

The first two lines of the poem

are a reference to a line written by the late Worcester poet Elizabeth Bishop in her poem “One Art”, and the final words of the poem end on an equally striking note.

Treseler said that she was both happy and surprised to have been given the award. Although she has been nominated several times in the past, this is her first win. Her poem will now appear in the 2026 Pushcart Prize Anthology, which this year will mark its 50^th anniversary edition.

The Pushcart Prize is an annual prestigious literary award that began in 1976. It is awarded for the best works of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction that literary magazines and small presses have published. Nominations to the prize are made by one of the contributing editors, who are former winners, and also by the journals and the presses themselves. Around 10,000 nominations are made every year, with around 60 winners chosen across the genres.

This prize is the latest in a long list of validations for poetry written by Treseler. Her first full collection of poetry was the 2023 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Titled “Auguries & Divinations” the collection was published in April 2024 and has also been placed on the longlist for the Massachusetts Book Awards which will announce its winner in the autumn.

Treseler is currently on sabbatical from the university whilst she works on her next big project.

The 2025 Foley Poetry Contest

The winners for this year’s Foley Poetry Contest have been chosen, and the words from many of the winning entries ask questions about grief.

is narrated by a grief-stricken speaker who draws the reader into a garden that is metaphorical and real. The poem is all about the grief the author feels over the death of their father and is explored through the sensory idea of a garden.

The poem selected as the runner-up is titled “Question” and is just 9 lines long. However, the judges stated that whilst it was modest in length, it was intricate in its design and very easy to commit to memory. The other poems that were awarded runner-up status in the competition include ” Life of Longing” and “Designer Death,” both of which tackle the topic of death from very different angles.