Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

Susan Briante recently won the 2021 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation for Defacing the Monument, which addresses immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bill FinleySpecial to the Arizona Daily Star

The literary awards season is well underway and the spotlight has again found Tucson.

Walking a red carpet similar to the one traveled by Tucsonans Lydia Millet and Lissie Jaquette, both finalists for National Book Awards last year, University of Arizona Professor Susan Briante has received the 2021 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation.

Briante was honored for Defacing the Monument, a remarkably unique look at the human drama unfolding every day along Americas southern border and how the words of earlier poets, addressing other dark moments in U.S. history, still echo in and around Nogales.

The Pegasus is one of the Poetry Foundations top annual awards, honoring the best book-length work of poetic criticism published in the United States the previous year.

Monument is Briantes fourth book, three being collections of her own work and this one a collection of selected excerpts by other poets, connected and re-illuminated by Briantes own personal essays.

She would probably have published more poetry by now, but she spends too much time doing poetry. When she isnt writing it, she is teaching it. Then theres this: shes married to a poet, Farid Matuk.

I think poetry has had a special place in my heart since I was in high school, Briante said. At some point I wrote a poem, not thinking much about it, and my friend liked it so much she started carrying it around in her wallet. That made such an impression on me. I liked writing fiction. I worked for a newspaper for awhile, but I kept hearing the poet in me.

Continued here:
This Tucson poet won an award for her look at immigration - Arizona Daily Star

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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