Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts Program successful originative penning announced Ohio writer Amanda Hodes won the 2024 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry publication contest, which includes a $2,000 grant and work of her debut poesy collection, “Into the Into of Earth Itself.”
The originative penning programme sponsors the nationalist prize, which honors Levine, the precocious writer and Fresno State prof emeritus of English. Levine won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize successful poetry, and helium was the 2011 writer laureate of the United States.
The Levine Prize is awarded successful concern with New York-based Black Lawrence Press, which has published modern works of poetry, fabrication and originative nonfiction by new, emerging and established authors since 2004.
Levine Prize last justice Diana Khoi Nguyen — a poet, multimedia artist, National Book Award finalist and MacDowell and Kundiman chap — chose Hodes’ manuscript arsenic the winner. There were 763 submissions. Nguyen wrote of the winning entry:
“Astonished, dumbfounded, horrified and agape astatine this symphonic opus which documents 2 sites of ecological disaster: Centralia, Pa., a bulldozed near-ghost municipality wherever a ember excavation occurrence has been burning underground since 1962, and Palmerton, Pa. conscionable an hr away, ‘one of the largest Superfund sites of the east, home’ to the speaker.”
The justice said “Into the Into of Earth Itself” has an ancestral vigor of Muriel Rukeyser down it, with nods to the documentary poetics of Layli Long Soldier and Anthony Cody, the personal-political confrontations of Solmaz Sharif, and the syntaxes of Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, jos charles and Harryette Mullen.
“Amanda Hodes singularly emerges with her ain alchemical lyric of excavation that exposes the firm exploitation of land, exploitative and unsafe ‘dark tourism’ and the extracted innocence of girls,” Nguyen said. “The publication aptly quotes ecofeminist student Vandana Shiva: this is ‘a civilization of rape — rape of the Earth, of section self-reliant economies, of women.’ Here, the mined corpus is that of the exploiters, of exploitation itself. This is simply a searing indictment for our times.”
Nguyen besides noted 1 manuscript arsenic a contention finalist: “A White Horse Is Not a Horse,” by Angelo Mao.
Hodes is simply a writer and caller media creator who presently teaches originative penning astatine Oberlin College & Conservatory successful Ohio. Her poems person appeared successful Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, [PANK], Pleiades, AMBIT, West Branch, Interim Poetics, DIAGRAM, the Academy of American Poets website, Quarterly West and elsewhere.
As an artist, she is funny successful dependable installation arsenic a way to an embodied, spatial poetics. Her caller media enactment has been exhibited successful venues specified arsenic the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, Torpedo Factory, Abington Arts Center, Hirshhorn Sound Scene Festival, Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology, AUDIRE, University of Kent and Dartington International Music Festival.
Hodes holds an MFA successful originative penning from Virginia Tech and master’s grade successful originative penning (poetry) from the University of East Anglia successful Norwich, England. She grew up successful Pennsylvania.
The Philip Levine Prize for Poetry is an yearly nationalist publication contention unfastened to each poets, but existent oregon erstwhile students oregon module of Fresno State. Vang coordinates the contention arsenic portion of the university’s English 242 postgraduate course, “Literary Editing and Publishing,” which provides students with hands-on nonrecreational acquisition successful the publishing field. The contention offers a $2,000 prize positive work and organisation by Black Lawrence Press.
