A. Poulin, Jr. Poet, translator, founder of BOA Editions

We’ve been asked to share the list of the 18 semi-finalists for the 9th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize contest. These manuscripts were sent to final judge Tony Hoagland who then made the final winning selection. Each of these manuscripts stood-out in its own way, so applause and kudos to the poets. While we don’t generally name official “semi-finalists” we’re happy to provide the list of the manuscripts that Tony Hoagland received. These appear in no particular order and include the winning manuscript, Walking the Dog’s Shadow by Deborah Brown, along with the finalists Red Appetites by Laura Bastian, Soldier’s Apology by Kerry James Evans, and Pathology of Goodness by Karen Zaborowski Duffy.

Kerry James Evens – Soldier’s Apology

Sass Brown – USA 1000

Noah Blaustein – Happiness Studies

Alison Powell – On the Desire to Levitate

Dilruba Ahmed – Dhaka Dust

Stacey Waite – Butch Geography

Ingrid Browning Moody – Arriving After Dark

Laurel Bastian – Red Appetites

Kate Fetherston – Cast of Fools and Angels

Dave Snyder – Pica

Ben Berman – Close to Closure

Karen Zaborowski Duffy – Pathology of Goodness

Miriam Bird Greenberg – A Child’s Primer of Augury

Deborah Brown – Walking the Dog’s Shadow

Danusha Lemeris – What Remains

Maureen Thorson – Up She Rises

Maureen Micus Crisick – To Love the World This Way

Heather Dubrow – Forms and Hollows

Deborah Brown. Winner of the 2010 Poulin Prize.

Deborah Brown is the 2010 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize winner for her first collection of poems, Walking the Dog’s Shadow. Tony Hoagland selected this manuscript from 18 finalists and will write a Foreword to the published collection. Brown will receive a $1,500 honorarium and book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in March, 2011, in the A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series.  

An annual competition, the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize is open to poets who have yet to publish a full-length-book collection of poetry. This year’s runner-ups were Red Appetites by Laura Bastian; Soldier’s Apology by Kerry James Evans; and Pathology of Goodness by Karen Zaborowski Duffy. Deborah Brown’s winning manuscript was chosen from a field of 780 entries. Tony Hoagland says, “Deborah Brown’s poems remind me a little of the great Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska. They both make thinking look easy. Overwhelmed and ashamed of the world, unqualified to fix anything, Brown’s speaker remains calmly capable of thought. ‘I’m writing to you from inside,/ in the thick of it’ she says. And also, ‘Bowling alone is no solution.’ And ‘In college I was sure I had a soul…What was I thinking?’ In Brown’s poems, our glasses (which we need, because the eyes aren’t what they used to be) have somehow been misplaced. First she locates them. With them, she finds a thread, which she follows down the winding corridors and stairways, to the deep part of the poem, where it touches life. Brown’s poems aren’t just about a eureka moment; they taste of the whole journey. Walking the Dog’s Shadow is a beautiful book, wise and sure of itself, fresh with wit and gravity, serious and true.”

Deborah Brown says, “A. Poulin Jr.’s Contemporary American Poetry is a book I carried with me for years. It introduced me to the new American poets. To win the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and to be published by BOA Editions is an honor.”

BOA Editions will accept manuscripts for the tenth annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize between August 1, 2010 and November 30, 2010.  An entry form and fee are required. The guidelines for the 2011 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize will be announced on www.boaeditions.org later this year.

Deborah Brown is a Professor of English at University of New Hampshire at Manchester. With Maxine Kumin and Annie Finch, she co-edited Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics (University of Arkansas Press, 2005), an anthology of poets’ writings on technical and aesthetic issues in poetry. Her poems have appeared in such literary journals as Prairie Schooner, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Margie, Rattle and The Women’s Review of Books. Her chapbook of poems, News from the Grate, appeared in 2003. With Richard Jackson and Susan Thomas she co-translated Giovanni Pascoli Last Voyage: Selected Poems which will be published by Red Hen Press in 2010. Deborah Brown graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in English, received an M.F.A. in Poetry from Warren Wilson College and a Ph.D. in English and American literature from UNH. She lives with her husband and three cats on a former dairy farm in the woods of Warner, NH.

Tony Hoagland was born in 1953 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His collections of poetry include What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf Press, 2003), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Donkey Gospel (1998), which received the James Laughlin Award; and Sweet Ruin (1992), chosen by Donald Justice for the 1992 Brittingham Prize in Poetry and winner of the Zacharis Award from Emerson College. Hoagland’s other honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship to the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the O.B. Hardison Prize for Poetry and Teaching from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Poetry Foundation’s 2005 Mark Twain Award. He currently teaches at the University of Houston and Warren Wilson College.

BOA Editions, Ltd. is one of the premier independent publishers of contemporary poetry and literary fiction. Founded in 1976 by A. Poulin, Jr. to provide a venue for both new and established poets to be published, BOA has released more than 220 titles, including two dozen books of poetry in translation. Many BOA titles and authors have been recognized with literary awards, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. 

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Delirious Hem is a blog for female poets, by female poets, that describes itself thusly: ”It’s a blog, it’s a poetics journal, it’s a platform. From time to time, a post will appear. It will be written by or with a poet whom some of us were curious to hear from. It will be exciting, provocative, fresh, or bombastic. It will go with your eyes and it will make you look ten years younger. It will never stop stop making sense, it will always love you, it will probably work.”

Delirious Hem is now featuring a tribute to Lucille Clifton with poems and statements by such poets as Naomi Shihab Nye, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Evie Shockley, with more being added in the coming weeks. It’s really a beautiful group of reflections on Lucille’s work and presence.

Check it out here [ Delirious Hem's Tribute to Lucille Clifton]

Lucille signing her BOA books. Photo by Robb Cohen.

This weekend, Lucille Clifton’s poetic legacy will be honored nationally on television and radio:

Bill Moyers Journal will air a tribute to Lucille tomorrow night. The show airs on PBS and starts at 9PM EST. A complete schedule list is available at the show’s website: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html

On radio, NPR’s “Weekend Edition” will air a 4-5 minute tribute to Lucille including clips of her reading from her BOA books. A complete schedule list is available at the show’s website: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=7

Both of these tributes will undoubtedly be moving and memorable.

Lucille Clifton accepting the 2000 National Book Award (AP Photo)

Matt Schudel wrote a moving tribute to Lucille that appeared in The Washington Post. The piece starts with a striking image from Lucille’s girlhood:

“When she was a girl, Lucille Clifton sat on her mother’s lap and listened to her recite poetry. Her mother never made it through elementary school, but she knew the power of language, and her poems stayed in her daughter’s head forever.