Public Poetry Project

2013 Poetry Advisory Committee: William Brockman, Steven Herb, Julia Kasdorf, Christopher Walker

2013 Poetry Selection Committee: Jim Daniels, Toi Derricotte, K.A. Hays

Video - Award Ceremony Overview

“For me, ‘Braille’  is one of those special poems I carry

around in my head at all times. The beautiful simplicity of those last lines serve as a profound reminder that we should be paying that kind of attention to the world—taking the time to tap ‘it gently with a stick.’”

Video - Award Ceremony

“Her poetry does not turn away, but instead confronts a truth that none of us can face, that we deny and turn away from. Her indomitable spirit allows us to be with that truth, while her great art finds a way with elegant and delicate stitches to -- as the title of her new book suggests – hem the water.”

Video - Award Ceremony

“This spare, image-driven poem has a long reach. Conversing with Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush,’ Ford’s ‘The Soul’ implies the speaker’s religious uncertainty or doubt, replacing Hardy’s hopeful, singing bird with the burnt bodies of swallows. Ford’s closing lines deftly echo, and make new through metaphor, the opening action of Hardy’s poem: ‘I leant upon a coppice gate / when frost was specter gray.’ Ford’s gate is, comfortingly, the soul itself—which endures regardless of our hope, and regardless of our belief in it.”

Video - Award Ceremony

"Jeff Oaks' writing about his mother's last communications with him before her death strikes the deepest human note and gives the reader a greater compassion both for themselves and for all the ones they love."

Video - Award Ceremony