The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to recognize and promote excellence in contemporary poetry by ensuring the publication of five books of poetry annually through participating publishers. In addition, the National Poetry Series has partnered with Miami Book Fair to award the Paz Prize in Poetry, which ensures bilingual publication for a book of poems written in Spanish. This conversation features Devon Walker-Figueroa on Philomath: Poems, in conversation with the judge who selected her manuscript, Sally Keith, River House: Poems. An explorer at the edge of the sublime, Devon Walker-Figueroa writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and of a beauty that is “merely existence carrying on and carrying on.” In her wanderings, she guides readers toward a kind of witness that doesn’t flinch from the bleak or bizarre: A vineyard engulfed in flames is reclaimed by the fields. A sow smothers its young, then bears more. A neighbor chews locusts in his yard. Philomath is a ruminative catalogue of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. With a special introduction by Daniel Halpern, founder of HarperCollins imprint Ecco and the National Poetry Series.
2020 National Poetry series Winner Devon Walker-Figueroa
2020 National Poetry series Winner Devon Walker-Figueroa
Walker-Figueroa, Devon
Devon Walker-Figueroa’s poems have appeared in various publications, including The Nation, POETRY, The American Poetry Review, the Lana Turner journal, and Ploughshares. Philomath: Poems (Milkweed Editions), her debut collection, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Sally Keith. In Philomath, Walker-Figueroa offers reflections of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. Beginning with the town that lends its name to the book, she wanders out into fields and farmland and beyond, guiding readers toward a kind of witness that doesn’t flinch from the bleak or bizarre. She writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and beauty and the poet’s (sometimes reluctant) obligation “to keep an eye / on what is left” of the people and places that have impacted us.
Keith, Sally
Sally Keith is the author of three previous collections of poetry – Design, Dwelling Son, and, most recently, The Fact of the Matter. Written in the wake of the loss of her mother, River House: Poems (Milkweed Editions) focuses on absence. Incorporating her travels abroad and her return to the river house she and her mother often visited, Keith makes her way through the depths of grief, navigating a world newly transfigured by her sorrow and loss. It is a guide to survival in the face of seemingly insurmountable pain. Even in the dark, Keith finds the ways we can be “filled with this unexpected feeling of living.”
Halpern, Daniel
Daniel Halpern is the author of eight collections of poetry, and has received numerous grants and awards (including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the 1993 PEN Publisher Citation). For twenty-five years he edited the literary magazine Antaeus. He is currently Editorial Director of The Ecco Press/HarperCollins.