The $10,000 prize recognizes a book written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision. In this collection that explores imaginative freedom in the face of personal loss, Kasischke reveals a penetrating insight into what makes people work and not work through her characteristic emotional range, wit, surprising and uncanny imagery, and an intensity created through spare and radiant language. We see ourselves as "space, in chains," bound and free, challenged by the book’s transfigurations of anxiety and grief into tribute and play.
The judges also selected three finalists for this year’s Rilke Prize: Kevin Prufer’s In a Beautiful Country (Four Way Books), Dana Levin’s Sky Burial (Copper Canyon), and Wayne Miller’s The City, Our City (Milkweed Editions).
Schedule of Events:
Thursday, April 19, 2012: UNT Reading, Eagle Student Services Center, Room 225, 8pm; Q & A, 4-5pm, location to be determined.
Friday, April 20, 2012: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 6:30pm Reception, Reading at 7:30pm
For details and media coverage, see http://artandseek.net/2012/02/09/unts-first-rilke-poetry-prize-winner-announced/