Just got word my poem, “Double Golden Shovel Sonnet Found on the Q Train,” was selected by January Gill O’Neil as the winner of the 2024 Yeats International Poetry Prize—some reflections on interconnectedness & the wild serendipity of life coming full circle:
1) The Distant Past:
My sophomore year of high school, before seeing Martín Espada read or being mesmerized by Saul Williams in “Slam,” there was one poet who uniquely compelled me with his political fire and virtuosity: W.B. Yeats. At this point in my life, I very much did not identify as a poet, did not write for myself, and most likely understood my feelings about Yeats’ work as a bewildering intrigue.
2) A Few Years Later:
My first semester of college, fully enamored with poetry at this point, I took a Literature of Civil Rights class in which we studied Black writers from the Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement, and beyond, as well as Irish independence writers, including Yeats. A delightful déjà vu, I was newly struck by Yeats’ singular brilliance and the radical dimensions of his work, both formally and thematically.
3) The More Recent Past:
One of my most cherished mentors in grad school, C. Dale Young, has a tradition of naming a shadow poet who his mentor, Donald Justice, called “the Crow that sits on your shoulder,” who is both a “challenge and warning to [your] own work.”
In my second to last packet of the semester, C. Dale told me mine was William Butler Yeats who “challenges [me] to infuse [my] poems with both the subjectivity of a person living in this world and the politics of a lived life, of longing and doubt brought about only by a quirky and odd imagination.”
4) The Present:
Somehow among 800 submissions January Gill O’Neil selected my poem for this prize, which is still a bit difficult to comprehend. I love that she chose a formally innovative poem set in the New York subway that meditates on masculinity and tenderness.
5) The Future:
Please join me in New York City on the evening of Thursday, April 18th at 6pm sharp for the award ceremony at Barnes & Noble’s flagship location in Union Square.
The event is completely free, and, candidly, I miss all my friends and fam in the city so much, please let us use this opportunity as an excuse to hug and catch up!
And, finally—Mr. Yeats, you have been on my shoulder since my first steps as a baby poet.
To you: I bow.
(Updated: Below are photos from the award ceremony in NYC.)
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