The National Poetry Foundation at the University of Maine is pleased to announce that poet and scholar Rachel Blau DuPlessis has selected manuscripts by Maurice Burford and Aaron Pinnix to share the 2013 Millay Prize for Poetry.
Maurice Burford was awarded the Millay Prize for his manuscript “Politic Politic.” Burford lives and writes in Bangor, Maine. He is the poetry editor for Housefire Publishing and the co-editor of Mammoth Editions. His work has recently appeared in Horseless Review, Shampoo, & Juked, and is forthcoming from Similar Peaks. He is the author of the chapbook An Atomic Fact (Horseless Press, 2013), Rimbaud’s/Poems (Grey Book Press, 2012) and with Jess Rowan Prithee (Abraham Lincoln Press, 2010).
Aaron Pinnix, originally from Alabama and formerly of Montreal, graduated from the University of Maine Master’s Program in 2013, with specializations in Poetry and Poetics and Gender and Literature. He currently lives and writes in New York City. His work, both critical and creative, can be found online and in Radical Philosophy Review, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. Pinnix was awarded the Millay Prize for his manuscript “johnny walked away, throwing his fbi badge into the surf.”
External judge Rachel Blau DuPlessis is well known as a poet and essayist, and as a critic and scholar with a special interest in modern and contemporary poetry. She is the author, most recently, of Surge: Drafts 96-114 (Salt, 2013) and Purple Passages (University of Iowa, 2012). A Professor Emerita of English at Temple University since June 2011, DuPlessis is also the author of The Pink Guitar, Blue Studios, H.D.: The Career of That Struggle, and many other volumes. In 1990 she edited The Selected Letters of George Oppen for Duke University Press.
The winning manuscripts will be celebrated in a reading at 5:30pm on Thursday, October 31, 2013 in the Soderberg Auditorium, Jenness Hall, on the University of Maine campus in Orono. Pinnix and Blau DuPlessis will present their own work. Due to a recent loss in his immediate family, Maurice Burford is unable to attend: his work will be presented by friend and fellow poet Sarah Cook. The event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.
The Frank and Helene Crohn Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize was established in 2010 by the Crohns, of Rhinebeck, N.Y., through a gift held at the University of Maine Foundation. The annual prize, which recognizes graduate student achievement in poetry, comes with a $1,500 award. Previous winners were Rachel Perry, selected by Ann Lauterbach in 2010; Jason Canniff, selected by David Trinidad in 2011; and James Brophy, selected by Martin Corless-Smith in 2012.
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The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliott fund, the Milton Ellis Memorial Fund, the Honors College, and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Pulp & Paper Foundation for the use of the Soderberg Center. For more information contact Steve Evans at steven dot evans at maine dot edu or at 207-581-3818.
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