National Poetry Month
In 1996, the Academy of American Poets named April as National Poetry Month. In the spirit of National Poetry Month, each April Southern Illinois University Press publishes new entires in the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry, copublished by the Crab Orchard Review and edited by Jon Tribble. The series is dedicated to celebrating the best and the brightest among contemporary poets. This year brings the publication of three new and distinct books of poetry:
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Misery Prefigured by J. Allyn Rosser. Rosser offers a wry peek at the mechanisms at work beneath our human skin with equal parts lighthearted exploration and dark-humored revelation.
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This Country of Mothers by poet and novelist Julianna Baggott. Baggot's verses reveal the great delights and anguishes of mother-daughter relationships, exposing the angst and appreciation at the heart of this unique bond.
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Names above Houses, prose poems by Oliver de la Paz. Steeped in elements of magical realism, Names above Houses functions as a novel, recounting the experiences of an immigrant family finding through place in a new world.
The Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry began in April 1999 with the releases the first two books in series, Denise Duhamel's The Star-Spangled Banner and Richard Cecil's In Search of the Great Dead.
The Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry returned in April 2000 with two more contributions to contemporary poetry: Crossroads and Unholy Water, the first book of poems by Marilene Phipps, and Winter Amnesties by Elton Glaser
Though not part of the series, April 2000 also marked the publication of The New Young American Poets: An Anthology. Edited by award-winning poet Kevin Prufer and with a foreword by Richard Howard, The New Young American Poets collects poems by forty writers born after 1960, including Sherman Alexie, Rafael Campo, Denise Duhamel, Allison Joseph, Ann Townsend, and Kevin Young.
For more information, contact Dan Seiters.
