Books :: Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize

The Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize is awarded to one poetry author a year, with a $2,000 prize and publication. 2014’s prize winner is Jay Nebel whose work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, and Tin House, among other journals.

Neighbors, his winning collection, is a book of lyric narratives about the men and women who live and work next to us the people standing in line at the DMV or buying milk and bread at the grocery store. Jay Nebel gives voice to an America lost in the graffiti of park benches and 24-hour diner parking lots, where men attempt CPR on gorillas and beat each other in back alleys with baseball bats, as well as revere their mothers. These are poems that look through the windows at the secret lives of our neighbors, their affairs and addictions, their curses and loves.

Published by Saturnalia Books this month, Neighbors can be purchased through the University Press of New England website.