Creative Writing’s Catherine Barnett Wins James Laughlin Poetry Prize
Photo by Jacqueline Mia Foster.
Catherine Barnett, who teaches poetry at Creative Writing at The New School, has been awarded the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award for her 2012 book The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press). The prize, honoring a poet’s second book, is yet another honor for the much-lauded Barnett, who has also received a Whiting Writers’ Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Judge April Bernard praised Barnett’s work in a statement: “With subtle and cumulative force, The Game of Boxes builds a complex poetic structure in which fundamental questions about motherhood, trust, eroticism, and spiritual meaning are posed and then set into motion in relation to one another. The mind is delighted, the spirit enthralled, by this wonderful book.”
In 2012 the Academy of American Poets awarded nearly $200,000 to poets at various stages of their careers. Barnett and the Academy’s other prize recipients will be honored at the Academy of American Poets Awards Ceremony at The New School on October 19, 2012 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.