US Poet Wins £30,000 (US$48,000) Dylan Thomas Prize

Well, Tragic picked a poet to win, but got the wrong one! He was spruiking Caroline Bird's, Watering Can  to win the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under 35, but it was not to be.  

Whilst Ms. Bird didn't win the £30,000 (US$48,000) on offer (it's only money after all, such a distraction when one can suffer a few years longer in the attic of one's art), the other poetry book in the running, by US poet Elyse Fenton (left), 29, did win with her collection Clamor, a book of war poety in which a woman reflects on her lover fighting in Afghanistan.

Clamor had previously won the 2009 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize. She was also a winner of the 2008 Pablo Neruda Award and has published her poetry and nonfiction in The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, and The New York Times. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon and divides her time unevenly between Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon.

Ms. Fenton's husband seems to have served in several theatres of war including Iraq as a medic, so his mission is certainly humanitarian.War has long been, and still is, a worthy subject for the poet's pen, particularly with such a deeply personal connection.   

 We all wish your husband a safe return from humankinds theatre of madness Elyse and congratulations on the Dylan - the man himself would no doubt approve.

A taste of Ms. Fenton's title poem from the book below - read it and weep.

Clamor

Staking fencing along the border of the spring
garden I want suddenly to say something about
this word that means sound and soundlessness
at once.  The deafening metal of my hammer strikes
wood, a tuning fork tuning my ears to a register
I’m too deaf to understand.  Across the yard

each petal dithers from the far pear one white
cheek at a time like one blade of snow into
the next until the yard looks like the sound
of a television screen tuned last night to late-
night static. White as a page or a field where
I often go to find the promise of evidence of you

or your unit’s safe return. But instead of foot-
prints in the frosted static there’s only late-
turned-early news and the newest image of a war
that can’t be finished or won. And because last
night I turned away from the television’s promise
of you I’m still away.  I’ve staked myself

deep to the unrung ground, hammer humming
in my hand, the screen’s aborted stop-time still
turning over in my head: a white twist of rag
pinned in the bloody center of a civilian’s chest,
a sign we know just enough to know it means
surrender, there in the place a falling petal’s heart would be.

note: Amazon UK has a whole 2 copies in stock at time of writing. For US readers of this blog Amazon US seems to have few more on hand (Clamor (Cleveland State University Poetry Center New Poetry))

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The Dylan Thomas Prize is an annual literary prize, named after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, "awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30 from anywhere in the world".

The prize is unique in its broad range of eligible material, covering novels, short story collections, poetry collections and plays.

The winner of the prize receives £30,000. The prize was announced in 2004 and the inaugural prize was awarded in October 2006 to Rachel Trezise and Nam Le in 2008. From 2010 the prize will be awarded annually.

Tragic ocvers the award at Literary Awards UK.