Lee Ann Roripaugh has chosen Carolyn Guinzio’s (A) V(ertigo Book) for the 2020 Tenth Gate Prize.
A Chicago native, Carolyn Guinzio lives in Fayetteville, AR. Her six previous books include Spoke & Dark (Red Hen, 2012), winner of the To the Lighthouse/A Room of Her Own Prize, How Much of What Falls Will Be Left When It Gets to the Ground? (Tolsun, 2018), and the visual poems Ozark Crows (Spuyten-Duyvil, 2018). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, and many other journals.
Guinzio is also a filmmaker, and her works have been official selections at the Cadence Film Fesitval where Ozark Crows won a jury award, Newlyn Film Festival (U.K.), Reel Poetry Houston, Nur Box (Canada), and the Poetry Film & Video Symposium, among others.
(A) V(ertigo Book) is slated for release this summer and will be the eighth annual Tenth Gate Prize winner. The prize, founded by the late Leslie McGrath in honor of the work of Jane Hirshfield, honors mid-career poets for the sustained development of their unique poetics. McGrath served for six years as Series Editor for the Tenth Gate, and her book Feminists Are Passing from Our Lives was published by The Word Works in 2016.
Other finalists were Joanna Penn Cooper (NC) for When We Were Fearsome, Henrietta Goodman (MT) for Antillia, Sonia Greenfield (MN) for A Pony Called Loneliness, Laura McKee (WA) for Love Letter(s), Boyer Rickel (AZ) for Leçons des Choses, Paul B. Roth (NY) for Weightless Earth, Heather Sellers (NE) for Present State of the Garden, Mark Wagenaar (IN) for Small Time Paradiso, and Helen Wickes (CA) for Transit of Mercury.
This year’s semi-finalists positively shimmered: Nathalie F. Anderson (PA) for Rough, Ralph Burns (NJ) for Dirt Mouth, Wendy Drexler (MA) for Swoop, Jeannine Hall Gailey (WA) for Flare, Corona, Jessica Goodfellow (Japan) for Inventory of Vanishing Points, Kathleen Halme (OR) for Florafauna, Pauletta Hansel (OH) for I Tell You Now, Danielle Hanson (GA) for The Clouds Have Arrived in Their Armor, Karen Kovacik (IN) for Portable City, George Looney (PA) Ode to the Earth in Transition, Gigi Marks (NY) for Life/Life in the Cold, Suzanne Matson (MA) for Combustible, Deniable, Kevin McLellan (MA) for in other words you, Megan Merchant (AZ) for Skin Hunger, Anatoly Molotkov (OR) for Future Symptoms, David Moolton (PA) for Heavier Than Sky, Lori Anderson Moseman (UT) for Too Many Words, Ethel Rackin (PA) Lately, Liz Robbins (FL) for Night Swimming, Sarah Sousa (MA) for In Her Black Boundaries, Nancy Takacs (UT) for Where the Primitive Looks for Us Again.