Congratulations to Marina Blitshteyn, the 2024 Tenth Gate Prize winner! Judge Richard Hoffman selected her manuscript form a more perfect from the six finalists, and publication is slated for January 2026. Blitshteyn also receives $1000 in prize money.
Form a more perfect delves into the multifaceted reality of emigrating to and living in America in our time, in tandem with the flowering of the poet’s vocation.
Richard Hoffman writes: “Was it always like this? What was it like back then? Why do some sit in cafés while others live on the street? What’s the worst that can happen? These are questions to conjure with, and in asking them, among many others equally trenchant, the linguistically alert poems of form a more perfect conjure a vision of our common life that is emancipatory, clear, fresh, and exciting.
“Crossing borders of language, of class, of this or that expectation, Marina Blitshteyn’s concentrated and incandescent poems are pleasurably unsettling, even liberating. Profane, vulgar, beautiful, and deeply nourishing—‘blood sausages of languages/ i pick up like scraps for a dog (a bitch) ’— the poems in form a more perfect bear witness to the tragedy of our unravelling, yet somehow manage to dance while carrying that weight.”
Born in Soviet Moldova, Marina Blitshteyn and her family came to the US as refugees in 1991. She is the author of two full-length collections, Two Hunters (Argos Books, 2019), and i take your voice (Switchback Books, 2022), winner of The Gatewood Prize, and the chapbooks Russian for Lovers (Argos Books), Nothing Personal (Bone Bouquet Books), $kill$ (dancing girl press), and Sheet Music (Sunnyoutside Press).
The Tenth Gate Prize runs under the directorship of Series Editor Jennifer Barber, author of numerous poetry collections and founding editor of Salamander. Founded in 2010 by Leslie McGrath, the prize is meant to support the work of mid-career poets who have worked to develop their own poetics. Submissions are accepted every year June 1 through July 15.