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The Nassar Poetry Prize is awarded to one upstate New York poet for their published collection of works.
The winner of this year’s Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize at Utica College is Shira Dentz, with her book, “Sisyphusina.”
Sisyphusina is a collection of poetry, visual art and improvisatory music that focuses on the concept of female aging. The book crosses many genres in its attempt to create new language to share the process of a changing identity. The book also touches on conventional beauty and embracing a new aesthetic.
An upstate New York poet and educator, Dentz has written five books, two chapbooks, and had her work featured on multiple platforms including
Poetry Daily,
and elsewhere. Matty is a Vice Presidential Fellow at the University of Utah where he is pursuing a PhD in English. He currently serves as the Managing Editor of
Quarterly West and the Wasatch Writers in the Schools Coordinator.
INTRODUCTION
Write patiently and read generously. The sustainable poet quickly learns patience, whether that be in the writing process and the arc of an individual poem or the hellscape that is the submissions process. As a young writer, I allowed my desire for affirmation or belonging to lead me to submit work that I now (and perhaps then) understand was not ready. Most of that work was mercifully rejected, but some of those poems found homes, and now I have some not-entirely-horrific-but-fairly-sloppy ditties living out there in the dark expanse of the digital ether. Perhaps that’s one of the many reasons I’ve embraced a practice of reading generously. To read generously is not to automatically support a writer or their work or to