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Sonoma County Poet-Teacher Kelly Gray Wins the Tusculum Review 2023 Poetry Chapbook Prize!

  • Writer: CalPoets
    CalPoets
  • Sep 13, 2023
  • 1 min read


Justin Phillip Reed, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry and the Lambada Award, has selected Kelly Gray’s The Mating Calls of a Specter as the winner of The Tusculum Review 2023 Poetry Chapbook Prize.


Kelly Gray is a Poet-Teacher living and working in Sonoma County.


Reed praises Gray’s work:


“. . . It’s really the sensual that gets me—some restoration of faith in the body-poem union comes terrifically alive here, not the least due to the presence of damp animals, sharp instruments, bare stomachs, wafts of beer breath, truck exhaust, ‘thin femurs// jagged alps of possum teeth.’ An anxious Frankenwork. I frequently delight in feeling frightened; is that alright? I’m made to ask. Is delight an appropriate response to these images? Should one feel ‘appropriate’ when reading poetry? In a contemporary fog of content over-saturation, I can’t not advocate for cultivating this sort of self-checking trouble as a beacon of worthwhile writing.”


 
 
 

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