Berssenbrugge is up for consideration for her most recent book,
A Treatise on Stars, which,
in the words of the judges, "extends Berssenbrugge's intensely phenomenological poetics to the fiery bodies in a 'field of heaven…outside spacetime.'" "These are poems of deep listening and patient waiting, open to the cosmic loom, the channeling of daily experience and conversation, gestalt and angels, dolphins and a star-visitor beneath a tree," the citation continues,"Family, too, becomes a type of constellation, a thought 'a form of organized light.'" They conclude: "All of our senses are activated by Berssenbrugge's radiant lines, giving us a poetry of keen perception grounded in the physical world, where 'days fill with splendor, and earth offers its pristine beauty to an expanding present.'" As we noted in our last post, Berssenbrugge was one of our Kelly Writers House Fellows in 2019, and during her visit she read a number of poems from
A Treatise on Stars, including "Star Beings," "Lux," and "Chaco and Olivia." You'll find audio and video from that visit
here, while
our PennSound author page for Berssenbrugge houses more than two dozen individual recordings going back as far as 1986, including interviews, radio programs, and many, many readings.
Choi was nominated for her latest, DMZ Colony, which the judges hailed as "a tour de force of personal and political reckoning set over eight acts." "Evincing the power of translation as a poetic device to navigate historical and linguistic borders," they continue, "it explores Edward Said's notion of 'the intertwined and overlapping histories' in regards to South Korea and the United States through innovative deployments of voice, story, and poetics." "Like its sister book, Hardly War," the judges conclude, "it holds history accountable, its very presence a resistance to empire and a hope in humankind." While we don't have a PennSound author page for Don Mee Choi, you can also hear her reading her work as part of Poetry Politic and as part of the 2012 MLA Offsite Reading.
We offer our congratulations to Berssenbrugge, Choi, and all of this year's worthy nominees. This year's panel, which will announce its final decision on November 18th, is chaired by Layli Long Soldier, and also includes Rigoberto González, John Hennessy, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Elizabeth Willis.
