Elliot Nicely Wins Ohio Poet of the Year Honorable Mention

On October 18th, in recognition of his debut collection Sine Qua Non (Red Moon Press, 2024), northern Ohio's Elliot Nicely was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2025 Ohio Poet of the Year ceremonies. 

Since 1976, the Ohio Poetry Day Association has selected annually an Ohio Poet of the Year, basing its choice on a book published in the previous year. Notable recipients of this award have included Mary Oliver and Maggie Smith. This year's winner was Cincinnati's Yalie Saweda Kamara, for her book Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024). 

Elliot Nicely has been published in leading haiku and poetry journals since 2006. His haiku has appeared in more than two dozen anthologies across four continents, and his writing was featured in Red Moon Press’s New Resonance series in 2019. Nicely also served on the Haiku North America 2023 Programming Committee and was co-judge for HSA’s Merit Book Awards in 2024. Nicely resides in Lakewood, Ohio.

1/11: Ohio Poetry Association Workshop featuring Yalie Saweda Kamara

In my new role as 2nd vice president of the Ohio Poetry Association, I would like to invite you to join us virtually on Saturday 11 January at 1 p.m. for a fantastic workshop with Yalie Saweda Kamara.

OPA Workshop featuring Yalie Saweda Kamara

For our first poetry workshop of 2025, we are thrilled to welcome the current Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati, Yalie Saweda Kamara. Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher originally from Oakland, California, and the 2022–2024 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. Invited for a third year of poet laureate service, her tenure will conclude in 2025. She is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University, where she specializes in creative writing and global and diasporic literature. Winner of the 2022–2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Kamara’s debut full-length poetry collection is Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024).

About the Workshop: “i am running into a new year”

In this workshop, whose title is based on the famed Lucille Clifton poem, poets will reflect on the gifts, struggles, and revelation of 2024 and engage in creative activity that considers world making in 2025. Through a multimedia exploration of surrender, embrace, confession, and celebration, we will endeavor to investigate the following query: How do the vestiges and blossoms from the previous year inform our understanding of and proximity
to "possibility" in the newest year?

This hybrid workshop will take place following the 10 a.m. OPA quarterly business meeting at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati and also via Zoom. 

To attend, please register at www.ohiopoetryassn.org/events. 

To learn more about Yalie Saweda Kamara, visit her website at www.yaylala.com.