A writer re-energized after a 43-year absence in print is one of three winners of awards intended for underrecognized poets.
The Chicago-based Poetry Foundation was to present the recipients of its second annual Pegasus Awards at a dinner Thursday in Millennium Park. The foundation, which publishes Poetry magazine and is lavishly funded by an Indiana philanthropist, introduced two new prize categories, each carrying an award of $10,000.
Landis Everson, 79, is the first winner of the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, for an American poet older than 50 who has not yet published a book of poetry. The foundation said his manuscript was selected from among more than 1,100 entries and is to be published by Gray-wolf Press of St. Paul.
Everson was part of the Berkeley Renaissance, a poetry movement in California’s Bay Area in the late 1940s. He wrote primarily for his poet friends and he stopped when the circle broke up in late 1960.
Reached this week at his home in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Everson said he missed the immediate reaction to his work he received from his friends, a satisfaction he didn’t get by having his work in print. “After being published the first time in a magazine, the thrill was gone,” he said.
In the ensuing years, he taught in college, painted and remodeled houses. He hadn’t given much thought to writing until he was contacted by Ben Mazer, a contributing editor of the poetry journal Fulcrum, who was working on an article about the Berkeley Renaissance.
That 2004 article included some of Everson’s poems, brought him recognition and led to a personal renaissance. He said he has written more than 100 poems in the last year.
“I’ve had an urge to make up for the 50 years I had not written” he said.
The foundation named William Logan, 54, as recipient of its first $10,000 Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism. Poetry editor Christian Wiman said Logan, who teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville, “has been called ‘the most hated man in American poetry,’ but … even those who can’t stand his opinions can’t keep themselves from reading him.”
Tony Hoagland, 51, won the $25,000 Mark Twain Poetry Award, to honor humor in American poetry. Hoagland, a University of Houston professor, has written three books of poetry, including 2003’s “What Narcissism Means to Me.”
Meanwhile, the foundation said it plans to move by year’s end from its current leased space at 1030 N. Clark St. to larger quarters in a building at 444 N. Michigan Ave.
In a letter to Poetry subscribers, foundation President John Barr said the goal is to build a permanent home one day to contain a large book collection, and to serve as a think tank, “an Aspen Institute devoted to verse.”
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