2016 Tufts Poetry Award Winner Ross Gay Revels With a Residency
What a glorious week.
2016 Kingsley Tuft Poetry Award winner and poet Ross Gay brought his joyful exuberant verses to Claremont this month during his weeklong residency, courtesy of the School of Arts and Humanities.
His Oct. 3-7 residency included several events open to the public, including readings at the Claremont Library and at the university’s new CGU | DTLA space at The Reef Building in Los Angeles, a poetry workshop at the dA Center for the Arts in Pomona, and launch party for the new issue of Foothill: a journal of poetry at CGU’s East and Peggy Phelps Galleries. He read several of his poems to students of English Prof. Wendy Martin on Oct. 3 in the William S. Rosecrans Court—instead of the original venue, a classroom in the John Stauffer Hall of Learning.
This year, Gay received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, a volume that the New York Times says “offers up a muscled poetry of a thousand surprises, giving us a powerful collection that fireworks even the bleakest nights with ardency and grace.”
Established at CGU in 1992, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award honors the work of poets who are in mid-career with a cash prize of $100,000; the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, established the following year, honors new voices with an award of $10,000.
Long regarded as the leading awards in the field of poetry, past recipients of the Tufts Awards include B.H. Fairchild, Henri Cole, D.A. Powell, Linda Gregerson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Brandon Som, Yona Harvey, and many others. Past judges include Carol Muske-Dukes, Alice Quinn, Paul Muldoon and Robert Pinsky.
