Congratulations to Kathleen Ma, who has just been selected for the Hoyt Jacobs Poetry Prize by Alice Quinn, former Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America!

Alice Quinn is the former Director of the Poetry Society of America and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts. She was poetry editor at The New Yorke from 1987-2007 and at Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers, from 1976-1986. She is the editor of Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop, and she is currently at work editing Bishop’s journals and notebooks.

Quinn had this to say about Ma’s prize-winning packet of poems:

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The element of play and surprise is sometimes underestimated in creative work, but it is nonetheless a large part of what draws readers to reread something that has affected or moved or startled them, and I found myself rereading Kathleen Ma’s sequence of poems over and over because I was charmed by swerves and turns of phrase and by her sense of play.

It may be that she has surprised herself writing these poems because she set out to hone her skills as a translator. But whatever means to the avenue, she seems delighted to be on this path.

Why does the sentence “Breakfast will no longer be served in the bicycle factory.” delight? Why does the gleam that shows up several times in this packet gleam? Perhaps because it leads to a summary statement as memorable as this:

“A red gleam swarms the rehearsal
on the street    where we are enabling
an afternoon to grow from its roots until the end of time!”

And the ebullience of this formulation will stay with me, too:

“Ah!
the meeting of the meeting
of the meeting.”

“With enormous greed I/ want it all” Ma writes in another poem.

Life and literature is ready for your appetite!

Bravo for the way you are seeing things aslant and initiating your readers.

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The Hoyt Jacobs Memorial Poetry Prize is an annual poetry prize given in honor of MFA alumnae Hoyt Jacobs, who died on January 17, 2015. The prize is open to all Queens College MFA students currently enrolled in the program. A prize of $1,000 is awarded to the best poems submitted.

You can read more about the unique chances our students get access to during the program on our Opportunities page:

Opportunities

Congratulations, Kathleen!!!