Tennessee poet Bobby C. Rogers, 45, is the winner of this year's Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize awarded by the University of Pittsburgh Press for a first collection.

Named for the first director of the press, the prize carries a $5,000 prize and publication. "Paper Anniversary" will be published next fall.

Rogers teaches English and is writer-in-residence at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. He listed his influences as:

:Whitman and Dickinson, George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Penn Warren, the stories and voices I heard on my grandparents' porch, the language of the public school playground, the ballfield chatter and work site rhythms I grew up with."

Contest judge is Ed Ochester, editor of the Pitt Poetry Series. More than 700 contest entries were received this year, he said.

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