It’s official! The 2011 Akron Poetry Prize winner, chosen by judge Natasha Sajé, is Prop Rockery by Emily Rosko of Charleston, South Carolina. About Rosko’s work, Sajé says:
“Art is about something the way a cat is about the house,” says Allen Grossman. This is abundantly true of Emily Rosko’s poems in Prop Rockery, a condition she defines with a quote from King Lear: “a looped and windowed raggedness.” And while this condition is “pretend,” and these poems are indeed virtuoso performances, the despair, loneliness, lies, and miscommunication they examine are as real as anything in art. Parataxis and fragments meet rhyme and chewy-on-the-tongue Anglo Saxon diction at the axis of postmodern irony. Prop Rockery explodes in your mouth—no sugar, plenty of bite.
The contest winner was selected from 413 entries. All thirty of the finalist and semi-finalist manuscripts were considered by the contest judge. We are also delighted to announce that Jason Bredle’s Carnival was selected for publication as the editor’s choice pick. Come hear Jason read tonight, with Noah Falck, at THE BIG BIG MESS READING SERIES right here in Akron!
The judge for the 2012 Akron Poetry prize will be Dara Wier. Wier’s most recent book is Selected Poems. Other recent books are Reverse Rapture and Remnants of Hannah. She teaches poetry workshops and form & theory reading seminars in the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers. She is co-director of the University of Massachusetts’ Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action and along with Guy Pettit and Emily Pettit, publisher and editor of Factory Hollow Press located at Flying Object in Hadley, Massachusetts. Her work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She’s served as a poet-in-residence at Hollins University, University of Montana, University of Utah and University of Texas. New work can be found in Lungful, Make, Boston Review, notnostrums, Fou, Maggy, Matter, Oh No, Telephone, and American Poetry Review. She lives in North Amherst, Massachusetts.
Full guidelines for the 2012 prize may be found -here-
2011 FINALISTS
011 Rebecca Hazelton, Fair Copy
057 Emily Rosko, Prop Rockery
145 Sarah Vap, Take us the Foxes
274 Marc McKee, Consolationeer
275 David Welch, Slow Weather Hymnal
276 Adam Clay, To Take Note of Where We Are
311 Jason Bredle, Carnival
335 Elizabeth J. Colen, What Weaponry
338 Charles Jensen, Nanopedia
407 Cori A. Winrock, Anti-Portrait at Flashpoint
2011 SEMI-FINALISTS
016 Rebecca Hazelton, Vow
024 Stephanie Kartalopoulos, Amulet
044 C.J. Sage, Open House
053 Suzanne Frischkorn, Castro, You’ve Nothing in Cuba Like My Desire
085 Gary L. McDowell, Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None
087 Keith Montesano, Sirens and Wildfire
088 Sandy Longhorn, In a World of Such Weather as This
097 Jen Tynes, Trick Rider
152 Anna Journey, Whisper to the Hive
175 Seth Abramson, Thievery
216 Kimberly Grey, The Opposite of Robot is Light
251 Jennifer Chapis, Fog and Invisible Horses
264 Travis Brown, In The Village That is Not Burning Down
312 Alexis Orgera, Dust Jacket
347 Dawn Lonsinger, whelm
366 Endi Bogue Hartigan, Chorus interstice
370 Liz Waldner, Homeseeker’s Paradise
377 Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, a slice from the cake made of air
411 Dan Rosenberg, the crushing organ
412 Shane McCrae, Colored Would
Congratulations to the authors of all these amazing manuscripts! Look for Prop Rockery in early 2012 and Carnival in the spring! And don’t forget to check out our past AAP winners Joshua Harmon and Oliver de la Paz, as well as the just released American Busboy from Matthew Guenette who reads in Akron September 2nd with THE BIG BIG MESS.
More poetry news soon!
