Dante Micheaux Wins $20K Four Quartets Prize

Dante Micheaux has won the Four Quartets Prize for his book Circus (Indolent Books, 2018)! The T. S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America announced the news today. The prize, which carries a $20,000 purse, was selected by judges Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Rosanna Warren. More:

The Judges' citation reads: "How right that this poet's first name should be Dante. For his Circus is a Comedy: a savage comedy, lacerating dialects, fingering wounds, looking for loves right and wrong in the crevices of history and of humiliated bodes. And yet, and yet. His language exults, triumphs, and freely rummages in the treasuries of the Bible, Baudelaire, Whitman, Eliot, Baraka, and Mahalia Jackson, taking what it needs, making it his sovereign own, a wrested blessing. Congratulations, Dante Micheaux, on your astonishing Circus."

Finalist for the 2019 Four Quartets Prize were:

Catherine Barnett for "Accursed Questions" from Human Hours (Graywolf Press)
Meredith Stricker for anemochore (Newfound Press)

Clare Reihill of the T.S. Eliot Foundation in London writes: "We warmly congratulate Dante Micheaux, this year's winner, for his brilliant achievement. T. S. Eliot was the master of the long poem. His position in 20th century poetry was built on the two most important long poems of his generation: The Waste Land and Four Quartets (with the latter hailed as his crowning achievement). Before this prize came into being, the form had no distinct prize in its honour."   

Congrats to all! Find further details at PSA.