The editors of Gunpowder Press have selected Color Advisory Board by Michele Santamaria as the winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. Congratulations to Michele and the finalists!
(Photo by Melissa Engle Photography)
In Color Advisory Board, Michele Santamaria pays homage to the late executive head of the Technicolor art department: Natalie Kalmus, the “Ringmaster to the Rainbow.” Color is everywhere in this spectacular collection: there is the “Girl as the Color Feral,” whose birthplace is “Barnacled gold and green”; the “Slut,” whose “bathing suit was Coca Cola red”; the black of “the wind when it gives / the world its outlines”; and the speaker’s son, who is “the Grand Canyon— / striated gold, browns, vertigo // like the ocean & larger, like dappled azure.” In an era when color is too frequently used against people, Santamaria celebrates our glorious variety in poems that “seethe of molten rock” and create “a new mythology,” one that all lovers of art and humanity will want to read again and again.
The editors also recognize nine exceptional manuscripts and poets as finalists for the prize, including:
- A Day Like This by Polly Buckingham
- Field Notes for Extinction by Mark Caskie
- Miracle Soap by Edison Dupree,
- Daughter of Salt by Leila Farjami
- My Last Crusade by Katie Hartsock
- An Angel and Other Apparitions by Christina Hauck
- Waking the Questions by John Isles
- Change in Elevation by Hari B Parisi
- Weeds and Stars by Lisa Rosenberg
About the Poet: Michele Santamaria received her MFA in poetry from University of Oregon, her MLitt in anthropology from University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and her MS in Library Science from Long Island University. Michele’s poems are informed by these diverse fields of study and by her experiences living in and between the Americas. Michele’s poems have appeared or will appear in Rhino, Harpur Palate, The Shore, The Canary, Bellingham Review, and Cimarron Review, among others. She received a scholarship from the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, served as a poetry reader for Clemson University’s South Carolina Review, and served as a senior poetry reader for Washington College’s Cherry Tree. Michele has also taught poetry to all age groups. As a poet-librarian, Michele published a chapter about poet-librarianship in Poet-Librarians in the Library of Babel and co-wrote a book about teaching research through social media engagement. She lives with her family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and works at Millersville University as the Learning Design & Student Engagement librarian, prioritizing the role of wonder in students’ research process.
Thank you to all the poets who gave us the opportunity to consider manuscripts. Each was carefully considered. Those of you who opted to receive a copy of the winning book will be sent a copy of Color Advisory Board as soon as it is available. As a newly-formed 501(c)(3), Gunpowder Press appreciates your support.