Keep and Give Away, by Susan Meyers (2006)
Selected by Terrance Hayes as the inaugural winner of the SC Poetry Book Prize. Meyers guides us through her examination of life's ordinary moments and the seemingly ordinary images that abide in them to reveal the extraordinary. From minutia to marriage, crumbs to crows, nothing is too commonplace to escape her attention as she traverses terrains of childhood, loss, relationships, and death. A longtime writing instructor, Meyers is the author of Lessons in Leaving, a chapbook selected by Brendan Galvin for the 1998 Persephone Press Book Award. Her poems have appeared in the Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Tar River Poetry and have been featured online at Poetry Daily and Verse Daily.
Driving through the Country before You Are Born, by Ray McManus (2007)
Selected by Kate Daniels as the second winner of the SC Poetry Book Prize. The speaker in these poems searches for redemption and solace while navigating from a traumatic loss in the past to a present fraught with violence and self-destruction. Here we witness family stories without happy endings, landscapes on the verge of collapse, and prophetic visions of horrors yet to come. From these haunting visions, salvation is rooted in hope that, out of the ruins, there remains the possibility of a fresh beginning. McManus’s poems have appeared in Nimrod, Crazyhorse, Jabberwock, Los Angeles Review, Cold Mountain Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the 1997 Academy of American Poets Award, the 2000 James Dickey Award in Poetry, and a 2002 Academy of South Carolina author's fellowship. McManus teaches writing at USC and is cofounder of Split P Soup, a poetry writing initiative.
Signals, by Ed Madden (2008)
Selected by Afaa Weaver as the third annual winner of the SC Poetry Book Prize. Deeply rooted in the recognizable landscapes and legacies of the American South, these lyric poems couple daring engagements in topics of race and sexuality with tender reflections on personal and cultural histories. Madden's adopted home of South Carolina rises to the surface in poems set at Folly Beach, Fort Moultrie, Lake Keowee, and Middleton Place. His interrogations of social oppression conjure the ubiquitous iconography of the bygone Confederacy, a first encounter with the miniseries Roots, and a cameo appearance by Strom Thurmond. Madden is an associate professor of English and associate director of Women's and Gender Studies at USC as well as writer in residence at Riverbanks Botanical Gardens in Columbia. His essays on politics and Southern culture have appeared in many newspapers and journals and on NPR. Natasha Trethewey selected him for inclusion in the anthology Best New Poets of 2007.
This free lunchtime program is presented by the South Carolina Center for the Book, the South Carolina affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. The SC Center for the Book is a cooperative project of the SC State Library, the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science, and The Humanities Council SC. This program is FREE and open to the public. Attendees may feel free to bring a bag lunch. Location: SC State Library Administrative Building, 1430 Senate St., Columbia, 29201.
On Thursday April 24, 2008 from noon to 1:00 p.m., the South Carolina Center for the Book located at the South Carolina State Library will host Susan Meyers, Ray McManus and Ed Madden, winners of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize. A major poet selects one poet per year to receive this award, which began in 2006 and is sponsored by the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the University of South Carolina Press.
