Celebrating 15 Years of the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship
December 6, 2018
“We launched this series of chapbooks, selected and introduced by distinguished contemporary poets, in 2003, bringing the total of poetry debuts as of this spring to sixty,” said Alice Quinn, Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, as she discussed the PSA’s Chapbook Program, which publishes each winner’s work as a gorgeous chapbook, allowing new voices to reach new audiences. On June 6, 2018, the PSA and its supporters gathered at the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at Cooper Union to celebrate 15 years of this successful program—and to honor this year’s winners.
With so many worthy manuscripts, the judging process is a difficult one. Quinn quoted Nick Flynn in his introduction to Alicia Salvadeo’s chapbook in 2013: “Every page is murmuring at once. My job, my impossible job, is to choose one manuscript from this cacophony . . . I begin reading poems, a few from this book, a few from the next, until, like all books, they begin talking to each other.” For Quinn, Flynn captured “how these volumes have been chosen for 15 years, with passion, commitment, discernment, and often exultant joy.”
In Brenda Shaughnessy’s stead, Dorothea Lasky introduced Nicholas Goodly, who captivated the room as he read with intensity from his chapbook Black Swim. In his poem “Siren,” he writes, “Each night I peel back / every iridescent scale / for a mound of flesh / I can agree with.”
Introducing her choice of winner, poet and judge Cate Marvin expressed how she found it difficult to narrow down her selection. It’s “like being in a room with a lot of voices competing for attention,” she said, and went on to say that the “manuscript has to have an athleticism to keep your attention.” Marvin selected What Kind of Omen Am I by zakia henderson-brown and expressed her love for the chapbook’s title, which—henderson-brownshared with the audience—comes from rapper Black Thought’s song “Making a Murderer,” from his Streams of Thought album.
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