POET LORE Nominates…

It’s that time of year again! Poet Lore, The Writer’s Center’s semi-annual poetry magazine, reveals which of its amazing contributing writers have been nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. Founded in 1976, the Pushcart Prize has become “one of the most influential projects in the history of American publishing,” according to Publishers Weekly. Every year, Pushcart Press invites small press editors to submit up to six works that they have published that year.  Pushcart editors then use these nominations in the making of their prestigious annual anthology, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. Recipients of the Pushcart Prize over the years have included Junot Diaz, Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, and Peter Orner.

Poet Lore is proud to announce its six nominees for the 2014 Pushcart Prize, whose poems and author bios are listed below. All of these poets use language and form in such a way that leaves the reader completely entranced and embody Poet Lore’s mission to create poetry that fuels our natural need for discovery. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Cornelius Eady - "Otis Redding, Being Pulled from Lake Monona"

CORNELIUS EADY is the author of eight books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Putnam, April 2008). His second book, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, won the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1985; in 2001 Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He co-founded the Cave Canem summer workshop/retreat for African American poets and is a professor at Notre Dame University.

Patrick Ryan Frank - "Body Double"

PATRICK RYAN FRANK is the author of How the Losers Love What’s Lost, which won the 2010 Intro Prize from Four Way Books, and The Opposite of People, due out in 2015. He was a recent Fulbright fellow to Iceland.

Joseph Ross - “When Your Word is a Match”

JOSEPH ROSS is the author of two books of poetry: Meeting Bone Man (2012) and Gospel of Dust (2013). His work appears in many anthologies and journals. He teaches English and creative writing at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC, and writes regularly at JosephRoss.net.

Sherod Santos - "I Was at One Time Close to Home"

SHEROD SANTOS’s latest book is The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2010). He lives in Chicago.

June Frankland Baker - "During the Downpour, at the Pond"

 

JUNE FRANKLAND BAKER lives in Richland, Washington. Her poems have appeared in such anthologies as The Blueline Anthology and Woven on the Wind, and in numerous magazines, including Commonweal, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Northwest, Slant, and Tampa Review.

Christopher Presfield - “Elegies for the Fallen” 

CHRISTOPHER PRESFIELD is the co-author of Gray Air (Cedar Hill Publications, 1999) and Dawn in the Big House (Pygmy Forest Press, 2006). His poems have also appeared in Poet Lore, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry, Briar Cliff Review, Rattle, and else­where. He has received five PEN Prison Writing Awards of varying placement over the years.