63. $100,000 für Dichter

Afaa Michael Weaver’s poetry collection The Government of Nature has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The prize, based at Claremont Graduate University, is awarded to a mid-career poet „to both honor the poet and provide the resources that allow artists to continue working towards the pinnacle of their craft.“ Chief Judge Chase Twichell said of Weaver, „His father was a sharecropper. After serving for two years in the Army, he toiled for 15 years in factories, writing poems all the while. When he learned that he’d won a National Endowment Fellowship, he quit his job and attended Brown University on a full scholarship. He essentially invented himself from whole cloth as a poet. It’s truly remarkable.“ Afaa’s devastating poem „If You Tell“ begins:

„If you tell, the stars will turn against you,
you will have not night but emptiness.

If you tell, you will live in an old house
in the desert all alone with cactus for friends.

If you tell, people will hide their children
from the monster others say your kind are.

If you tell, the police will add you to the list
of people who might have killed the albatross.

If you tell, you will walk in a hollow room
full of the sound of liar, liar, pants on fire.“

/ Annalisa Quinn, NPR