The Department of English is delighted to congratulate Senior Lecturer Weston Morrow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry Allison Pitinii Davis (MFA '12) for their recognition in the 2025 National Poetry Series Open Competition! Morrow's Cloud Builder is one of five winning manuscripts, and Pitinii Davis' Outskirts was noted as a finalist. 

The National Poetry Series Open Competition is a literary awards program that seeks to support poets by sponsoring the publication of five books of poetry each year. Winners are selected by nationally renowned poets and published by partnering presses. 

Cloud Builder, which was selected by poet Ariana Benson for publication by the University of Georgia Press in 2026, is a collection that asks readers to consider what we owe the dead, interrogating the burden of legacy and the ever-watchful gaze of our deceased loved ones. Morrow’s search for answers takes him from the landscapes of the late Romantics to the soccer fields and baseball diamonds of present-day Washington State, along the way reanimating figures from his own and our collective past.  

Outskirts, which has been awarded a 2025 NEA grant, is a hybrid project exploring global deindustrialization, the 1972 General Motors Lordstown auto strike, motherhood and postindustrial psychogeographies. Poems from Outskirts have appeared in or are forthcoming from the Oxford American, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Pitinii Davis extends her congratulations to Morrow, saying "I'm so incredibly thrilled for Wes and cannot wait to read Cloud Builder! I'm honored to be his colleague."

Following the announcement, Morrow is “still waking up and re-opening the email to make sure it’s real and not a dream. When I found out I was a finalist, I finally understood what actors mean when they say, ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated.’” Morrow says this award is “a testament to all the support and work” of everyone in his life, including his colleagues in the department: “it genuinely wouldn’t have happened without everyone’s support—especially my wife, Elissa Washuta, who believed in me and this project even when I couldn’t.”