2026 Nature Poetry Prize: Winners & Finalists
We are delighted to share the winners, finalists, and longlist for the 2026 Nature Poetry Prize! Please join us in congratulating these incredible poets. We’re deeply grateful to all who shared innovative and exciting poems with us—we are so lucky to have been immersed in the natural worlds of your work! The winning poem and runner-ups were selected by guest judge Kimiko Hahn and are published on the Palette website.
Winners of the 2026 Nature Poetry Prize
1st place — Nicholas Yingling for “First Contact”
Nicholas Yingling is the author of The Fire Road (Barrow Street Press, 2024), which was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Pleiades, Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. In 2023, Bellevue Literary Review adapted one of his poems as part of their interpretive dance series, Reading the Body. He won the 2026 Fugue Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Berkshire Prize and Snowbound Chapbook Award; a semifinalist for the Frost Place Chapbook Competition and the Chad Walsh Chapbook Series; and longlisted for the Frontier Chapbook Contest. He has degrees from UC Davis and UC Berkeley. Currently, he lives in the Bay Area, where he teaches ESL. He may or may not join a monastery one day.
2nd place — Vuong Pham for “Brisbane River Rowing”
Vuong Pham’s poetry explores themes of displacement and cultural identity. One of his poems, “Mother” is studied as a prescribed text in the New South Wales Higher School Certificate English syllabus (2019—2025). His honours include the Blake Poetry Prize (Highly Commended, 2026); Woorilla Poetry Prize (Commended, 2025); Frontier OPEN Prize (Finalist, 2025); Bridport Poetry Prize (Highly Commended, 2025); South Coast Writer’s Centre Poetry Prize (Runner-Up, 2025); Local Word Poetry Prize (Highly Commended, 2025); Australian Catholic University Poetry Prize (Highly Commended, 2024); Shinhaiku Contest (Merit Award, 2024); and Newcastle Poetry Prize (Shortlist, 2023). He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poetry. Read more on his website at: vuongphampoetry.wordpress.com
3rd place — Michael R. Clark for “Strange Attractor”
Michael R. Clark is a poet, essayist, writing teacher, editor, and curator of his own nerdy collections. He lives and teaches in Singapore, and has lived overseas since 2008. He holds an MFA from the University of Maryland (1997) and a PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi (2000). He was the first editor of the revived Little Patuxent Review, an arts journal in Columbia, Maryland, and edited the biannual issues of the magazine from 2006 until 2010. His work has appeared in journals like River Styx, Beloit Poetry Journal, Carolina Quarterly, and Poet Lore, and in many online publications. Read more at michaelrclark.com.
Finalists
Laura Apol
Dustin King
Miranda McCoy
Leslie Miller
Xochitl Portillo
Kim Welliver
kimai 기마이
Longlist
Quinn Bailey
Annie Blodgett
M Soledad Caballero
Mary Craig
Steph Ellen Feeney
Jennifer Handy
Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras
Brooke Mitchell
Laura Newton
Deidre Powell
Elisabeth Preston-Hsu
Jonathan Pyner
Victoria Reynolds
Laurel Roth
Rebecca Weil
Jay Yencich