Sundog Poetry Center is pleased to announce that “the blue-collar sun” by Lucas Farrell of Townshend is the winner of the 2020 Sundog Poetry Book Award for a first or second manuscript by a Vermont-based poet. “the blue-collar sun” will be published in partnership with Green Writers Press of Brattleboro this spring. The award also includes a $500 cash prize, 50 copies, a featured reading at the AWP Conference in March, and a major book launch in Vermont in April 2021.
This year’s final judge, Vermont State Poet Laureate, Mary Ruefle, said of the winning manuscript: “‘The world is hard to find once you start looking for it’—from its beginning this book activates such a search … in such a startling way that by the breath-taking final section the poet finds himself searching for his relationship to a fish hook. Which of all objects looks most like a question mark, so the search becomes not one for answers but for the questions themselves, that Rilkean stance. Questions carry with them the obligation to go on, to carry on in any direction they may take us, and for the sake of the art of poetry Lucas Farrell does just that. His is a mind that never stops moving.”
The 2021 Sundog Poetry Book Award is open to all Vermont-based poets who have not yet published a first or second book. Check the website for more information: sundogpoetry.org/vt-book-award.
