We recently announced PoemTalk Episode #200, which served as a celebration of poet Evie Shockley, and celebration is certainly in order, as Shockley was recently announced as this year's winner of the Academy of American Poets' Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement. Awarded in memory of James Ingram Merrill, "the Academy of American Poets Fellowship was the first award of its kind in the United States," and has been presented since 1936. It includes a stipend of $25,000 and a stint as writer-in-residence at the Eliot House in Gloucester, MA (n.b. the T. S. Eliot Foundation endows the award).
In their citation, Academy Chancellor Ed Roberson observes that Shockley "uses the persons of history in the way that other writers and landscape painters use the colors of the light on things to create space and time." He continues, "Shockley here has rewritten the textbook on mythological and historical poetic allusions, among her other innovations in American poetry. In her biographical and genealogical poems, the identity which is writing itself into existence does not have to fabricate a simulacrum of the immensity of its pain or achievement, no need for virtuosic figures of speech," before concluding with the notion that "Her figures speak for themselves and more; she makes these identities larger than both history and our individual selfies, and makes them speak for the total of us."
You can explore nearly twenty years' worth of recordings on Shockley's PennSound author page, starting from a 2005 appearance on the radio program Cross Cultural Poetics (her first of two), and including readings for the Segue Series, Belladonna,* and Penn State University, plus several conference panels, and a pair of MLA Offsite readings. Click here to start listening.
