The inaugural Anya Krugovoy Silver Poetry Prize, a newly established award that invites students at Mercer University not just to compete, but to celebrate poetry as an art form, was awarded to Isabella Ragsdale '26, who penned the poem "Semelparous." The award was created, its organizers said, to remember the life and legacy of Anya Krugovoy Silver.
Silver was a professor at Mercer University for 18 years, as well as a critically acclaimed poet who was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship the year of her death in 2018. The prize, named in her honor, offers national recognition through the Academy of American Poets website, a $100 award and the possibility to compete for further honors and a $1,000 prize.
Its significance, however, runs much deeper. For many who knew the late poet on campus, the newly established competition is about honoring a professor who has passed, but whose voice still resonates.
For Andrew Silver, Anya’s husband and a professor at Mercer, the prize's meaning is not found in accolades, it is found in who she was.
“Anya was someone who believed deeply in being kind, respectful, and empathetic,” Andrew Silver said. “She wrote poetry to feel connection to the world, to something beyond the world, but also, to feel connected with other people. She said poetry helped to humanize us and understand our place in the universe.”
Anya Silver joined Mercer’s faculty in 1998 and quickly became known not only for her award-winning writing but for how she showed up for others.
“She tended to really mentor students and served as a role model for them,” said Andrew Silver. “She loved her students, and her students loved her.”
She was also deeply joyful in a way that left an impression on everyone around her. Andrew Silver said that "she was the sort of person who would laugh so hard that she couldn’t breathe.”
That joy existed alongside profound hardship. In 2004, while pregnant with her son, she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of inflammatory breast cancer. Years later, the cancer returned as metastatic, which meant it was incurable.
And yet, even as she lived with that harsh reality, she continued to teach, to write and to build meaningful connections with people in her life.
“There was a lot of laughter past that metastases point,” Andrew Silver recalled.
Her illness became what Anya Silver once called her “flood subject,” a phrase coined from Emily Dickinson. Through poetry, she wrestled with faith, suffering and what it means to live in the face of uncertainty or death. The certain future she faced, though, strengthened her poetry, her husband said.
“She was always an amazing poet, but her experience with cancer gave her a subject that allowed her to rise to another level of craft,” Andrew Silver said.
As her illness progressed, she found community among other cancer patients who she met online and came to consider lifelong “soulmates.” In those eight years, Andrew Silver said, that community slowly changed as members died and were adopted as other people learned similar, life-altering diagnoses.
Those relationships helped shape her work, which explored grief, resilience, and spiritual questioning. At the same time, her poetry never lost sight of beauty.
“Her work is also a celebration of everything she loved about living, the natural world, her family, her son,” said Andrew Silver, adding that "she still is incredibly important to the people inside the metastatic breast cancer community."
The Anya Krugovoy Silver Poetry Prize was awarded for the first time this year, and was created primarily by Gordon Johnston, a professor at Mercer and one of Anya Silver's closest colleagues.
“It's gratifying to know that Anya’s name will be remembered in this way. I like to think that the prize will lead undergraduate poets to discover her work, which lives on,” said Johnston.
Though "Anya was not really into competitions that much," Andrew Silver said, he believes her goal for this prize would have been for participants to “just love each other, lift each other and celebrate one another as poets.”
The announcement ceremony consisted of some of Anya Silver's former students sharing their stories about her, including Justis Ward '17, who wrote a remembrance of her from his time as a student at Mercer, where she first suggested to him a minor in creative writing.
Ward, then a biochemistry and molecular biology student at Mercer, is now pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Lindenwood University.
Following Ward was Jennifer Champagne '14, who announced the winning poem and gave her own recollection of Silver. After the winner was announced, other students who submitted poetry came up to the podium to read their own poetry as well as selections from Anya Silver's work.
The prize had personal meaning to Ragsdale as well. Her father died about a year ago, and Ragsdale said the loss she has felt since then has been a similar feeling of loss of Anya Silver, whom she had never met but admired.
"I think that celebrating people who have been lost is important," she said. "And I also think that this one specifically is a big deal for me, just because it's been the first year for me without a parent."
In order to pick the best works of hers to submit, Ragsdale chose thematic relevance akin to what Anya Silver was known to write about. She now would encourage aspiring poets to "not follow a pattern or stick to a form."
"Write what's true, and then go with that," she said.
The largest part of the ceremony, though, was focusing on a current impact to all students who write poetry who might be inspired by Anya Silver's works. To Andrew Silver, this means that the memory of his late wife remains current even though she is no longer alive.
“If the prize can manage to encourage a young poet to keep at it, I think Anya would find that delightful,” he said.
Clara Kurczak '29 is majoring in journalism at Mercer University. She loves capturing moments and bringing stories to life with her camera and pen. When she is not working on articles, Clara enjoys listening to music, spending time with the people she cares about and reading anything she can get her hands on.
Jacob Hossler '28 is an English and Law and Public Policy double major at Mercer University. While not serving as the Sports Editor at The Cluster, he enjoys running, writing and photography.
