{"id":38039,"date":"2017-08-31T22:43:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T04:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38039"},"modified":"2018-09-20T22:44:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T04:44:02","slug":"2017-15-bytes-book-awards-poetry-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/2017-15-bytes-book-awards-poetry-finalists\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 15 Bytes Book Awards: Poetry Finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
The 5th Annual 15 Bytes Book Awards is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2017 Poetry Award.<\/p>\n

As with all nominees, finalists were eligible for consideration if they were published professionally in 2016 and had a connection to Utah via themes, setting, or author\u2019s residence. The finalists were determined by 15 Bytes\u2019 staff and guest judges based on two criteria: quality of writing\/artistry and that\u00a0indefinable quality that makes a book special and unforgettable<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s finalists include the following (in no particular order):<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"W<\/em>ho is the Dancer, What is the Dance?<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>(Saltfront), by Alex Caldiero<\/p>\n

Who is the Dancer, What is the Dance?<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0a collection of poems that engages readers by\u00a0opening us up to something bigger and far more substantive than what one could reasonably expect to find in so slender a volume. Alex Caldiero\u2019s\u00a0project, it seems, is to use a symphony of language,\u00a0tone, texture, and the movement of line to convey a richer account of the actual experiences described in the book than language alone is capable of providing. In this sense, the book is a triumph. By way of Caldiero\u2019s words and illustrative efforts, readers will not only smell the water and feel the sky but are also somehow able to encounter the Colorado River in a way that provides a sense of its\u00a0raw power, and lays bare the vulnerability of the\u00a0flesh in a wilderness context. The book\u00a0<\/i>pushes its way into, and seemingly through, the fabric of physical\u00a0reality to provide access to the spiritually transformative power of such\u00a0a personal encounter with nature, even coasting into the end of the journey with all of the unfathomable disappointment that usually accompanies the end of such a communal experience. Readers who are unable, or perhaps no longer able, to have a river experience like the one written about here will find the very next best thing in Caldiero\u2019s project, \u201ccaught and stoppered . . . sealed away for opening\u201d whenever the reader desires.<\/p>\n

You can read our review of the work\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Paisley Rekdal, Photo by Austen Diamond<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Imaginary Vessels\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(Copper Canyon Press),<\/em>\u00a0by Paisley Rekdal<\/p>\n

In a luminescent language, Paisley Rekdal\u2019s fifth collection of poetry,\u00a0Imaginary Vessels<\/em>, explores a broad assortment of both the anticipated and most unexpected spaces in life, prying open their containers like oysters, using language as her blade, for our consideration, thought, and pleasure. Less physically grounded than her earlier\u00a0Animal Eye<\/em>, the\u00a0contrasting flashes of beauty and violence found in the poetry collected here\u00a0remind the reader that the spaces we create, discover, and occupy both invite and defy articulation. They are identifiable, yet resist definition. Rekdal\u2019s\u00a0efforts to understand these spaces and their containers reach a dark and intimate crescendo in the fourth section of the book, \u201cShooting the Skulls: \u00a0A Wartime Devotional,\u201d in which she offers verse to accompany a series of photographs by Andrea Modica. Modica\u2019s gallery of photographs displays a series of anonymous\u00a0human skulls discovered buried in the grounds of The Colorado Mental Heath Institute. Where the photography arrestingly captures the broken contours and unavoidable physicality of the skulls, Rekdal\u2019s poetry seems to seek their missing souls, the flash of life that, once present in these housings, has long\u00a0left. In the verse of the new, just-installed Utah Poet Laureate, the skulls in these images are empty houses, abandoned by their occupants, and narratives of\u00a0the shocking and violent lives of the patients at the Institute, a microcosmic reflection of the Stygian\u00a0mysteries of the human condition and, more specifically, of\u00a0our willingness to inflict violence upon one another.<\/p>\n

You can read our review of the work\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by Kent Miles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Flight\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(Red Hen Press), by Katharine Coles<\/p>\n

With a classic naturalist\u2019s eye for detail, Katharine Coles\u2019\u00a0Flight<\/em>\u00a0moves through a catalog of places and moments loaded with whimsy, anthropological heft, and just enough reverie to leave a lasting impression on its readers. These are, in some measure, love poems that exist in the places in between our deepest impressions, rather than simply in the typical surprise and praise we might expect. It is in these asides, in the breaths between and in the shock of coming back into ourselves, where Coles most shines. Coles\u2019 speaker stands apart as one who \u201cgo[es] in every little room, until [she\u2019s] left behind\u201d in a tour of Pompeii\u2019s ruins, and affords the impossibility of prayer\u2019s physical transmission as \u201cdrift[ing] all the way to the bend \/ and out of sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read our review of the work\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

The winner of the award will be announced in September during the\u00a0Utah Humanities Book Festival<\/a>. Stay tuned for the award ceremonies and readings. \u00a0Finalists in fiction have been announced\u00a0here<\/a>, and the finalists for creative nonfiction and art book will be announced soon.<\/p>\n

15 Bytes and its publisher Artists of Utah thanks everyone who nominated a book for this award and for their support of the literary arts in the Beehive State.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to the finalists!<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 5th Annual 15 Bytes Book Awards is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2017 Poetry Award. As with all nominees, finalists were eligible for consideration if they were published professionally in 2016 and had a connection to Utah via themes, setting, or author\u2019s residence. The finalists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":834,"featured_media":38040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3230,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-awards","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/bookawardspoetry-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 09:02:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38041,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38039\/revisions\/38041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}