Devin Becker is the winner of the thirteenth annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize for his collection Shame | Shame. The collection was selected from nearly 500 manuscript submissions by renowned poet David St. John. Devin Becker will receive a $1,500 honorarium and book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in spring 2015.

Of the collection, David St. John says, “Devin Becker’s Shame | Shame is a brilliant debut collection. Here, the prose poem has been re-imagined as a cinematic vignette, yet rooted as deeply in the American Northwest as anything in Richard Hugo and David Lynch. Raw, intimate, and elliptical in its metaphysics, Becker’s poetry captures an idiomatic recklessness while navigating those angular narratives of our contemporary lives.”

Two finalists were also selected: Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live by Monica Berlin, and Load Save Game by Briony Gylgayton.

Devin Becker holds degrees from Williams College, the University of California, Irvine, and Indiana University. His poetry and research articles appear widely in such places as American Archivist, Cutbank, Faultline, Microform and Digitization Review, Prairie Schooner, and Washington Square, among many others. He currently lives in Moscow, Idaho, where he works as the digital initiatives and web services librarian at the University of Idaho Library.

BOA Editions will accept manuscripts for the fourteenth annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize between August 1 and November 30, 2014. An entry form and $25 entry fee are required. Click here for complete guidelines and eligibility requirements for the 2015 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

Congratulations, Devin, and welcome to the BOA family!