Doug Ramspeck Wins the 2021 Tenth Gate Prize

Lauren Camp has selected Doug Ramspeck‘s poetry collection Blur as the winner of this year’s Tenth Gate Prize. It will be released in the spring of 2022.

Doug Ramspeck is the author of eight previous collections, one collection of short stories, and a novella. His most recent book, Book of Years (2021), is published by Cloudbank Books. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Slate, and many other journals. His short story “Balloon” was listed as a Distinguished Story for 2018 in The Best American Short Stories. A retired professor from The Ohio State University, he lives in Black Mountain, NC.

Says judge Lauren Camp: “A kind of tension pervades these poems, balanced by an under-the-surface, learned tenderness. In Blur, place is one of the memorable characters. The poems actively slip into the mystery and rhythm of boy-ness, giving us the children’s roughhousing, as much as the snow and riverbank. Time moves on to longing and dreams. ‘Decades became a bolt /on a door—sometimes latched, sometimes open.’ Ramspeck is sonically skilled at opening a reader to “the austerity and the gentleness of holding still.”

Our Thanks and Congratulations to the 2021 Finalists:

Sarah Sousa (MA) In Her Black Boundaries
Elaine Terranova (PA) Rinse

And All Hail to the Semi-Finalists!