2020 National Poetry Series Winner Devon Walker-Figueroa

The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to recognize and promote excellence in contemporary poetry by ensuring the publication of five books of poetry annually through participating publishers. In addition, the National Poetry Series has partnered with Miami Book Fair to award the Paz Prize in Poetry, which ensures bilingual publication for a book of poems written in Spanish. This conversation features Devon Walker-Figueroa on Philomath: Poems, in conversation with the judge who selected her manuscript, Sally Keith, River House: Poems. An explorer at the edge of the sublime, Devon Walker-Figueroa writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and of a beauty that is “merely existence carrying on and carrying on.” In her wanderings, she guides readers toward a kind of witness that doesn’t flinch from the bleak or bizarre: A vineyard engulfed in flames is reclaimed by the fields. A sow smothers its young, then bears more. A neighbor chews locusts in his yard. Philomath is a ruminative catalogue of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. With a special introduction by Daniel Halpern, founder of HarperCollins imprint Ecco and the National Poetry Series.

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