Lauren Levin Awarded SF State's Poetry Center Book Award for The Braid

In lovely news, Lauren Levin, author of The Braid (Krupskaya, 2016) and, most recently, Justice Piece // Transmission (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2018), has just been awarded San Francisco State University's Poetry Center Book Award! Presented annually since 1980, the award carries a cash prize and is meant to celebrate "a single outstanding book of poetry published in the previous year." From the Judge's Statement for The Braid:

Many of the books I read for the Poetry Center Book Award spoke to me, were doing urgent and interesting work, shared vital rhythms, sounds, forms, and concerns. But The Braid rose. It articulated and worried – as in worked, as in worried – some of my (and I would venture to say ‘our’) most pressing concerns. What I’m looking for is a way to join with the world / and love won’t let me do that any more than hatred will. And the way it did so was expansive and specific, so good at the vague grammar of consciousness and the precision of “personal” experience. Maybe I should call this poem that refuses to stop / ‘the care-giver’ / or ‘the shepherdess’ or ‘the murderess’… Levin’s long poems made of long lines allow tenderness and aggression to coexist, like in the game Levin plays with daughter Alejandra, “Little bee, little bee, don’t sting your mama” / while she nudges my face with her mouth and nose … / and shouts into my mouth, STING! Also, the principal of the braid as a combinatory form in which the source materials remain fully themselves, even when brought together, I found so respectful and responsible in this era of cooption, merging, networks. Different bodies at different times in different places have different experiences... 

Find out more here! Congrats to Levin!