Wow—my poem, “Elegy for Breath,” was selected by M. Nzadi Keita as the winner of the 2019 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry!!!
In her judge’s citation for the prize, M. Nzadi Keita wrote:
…puts fragmented testimony, restrained lineation, shifting
tones, and layered imagery to the service of its unrelenting, traumatic subject matter. These facets are unshakable. This poem haunts our very own breathing with a question, both mournful and matter-of-fact: how much, in the U.S.A., does breathing inside a human black body redefine, from birth to death? Focused on the long tradition of American citizens murdered by police, each stanza in this poetic montage answers in a different way. Consequently, [Gómez] extends Alice Walker’s practice of “honoring the difficult” with work that feeds our consciousness, entwining intimacy and challenge, holistic pain and human connection.
