Thur., Apr. 24: SC Center for the Book reading

National Poetry Month Program
South Carolina Center for the Book
1430 Senate Street,
Columbia, SC
Thursday, April 24
12 noon - 1 p.m.
Reading & discussion by Susan Meyers, Ray McManus & Ed Madden
Winners of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize
www.sccenterforthebook.org
Free and open to the public
Attendees are welcome to bring bag lunches
Books will be for sale on site.

A major poet selects one poet per year to receive the SC Poetry Book Prize, which began in 2006 and is sponsored by the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the University of South Carolina Press.

Keep and Give Away, by Susan Meyers (2006)
Selected by Terrance Hayes. Meyers guides us through her examination of life's ordinary moments and the seemingly ordinary images that abide in them to reveal the extraordinary. From minutiae to marriage, crumbs to crows, nothing is too commonplace to escape her attention as she traverses terrains of childhood, loss, relationships, and death.

Driving through the Country before You Are Born, by Ray McManus (2007)
Selected by Kate Daniels. The speaker in these poems searches for redemption and solace while navigating from a traumatic loss in the past to a present fraught with violence and self-destruction. Here we witness family stories without happy endings, landscapes on the verge of collapse, and prophetic visions of horrors yet to come. From these haunting visions, salvation is rooted in hope that, out of the ruins, there remains the possibility of a fresh beginning.

Signals, by Ed Madden (2008)
Selected by Afaa Weaver. Deeply rooted in the recognizable landscapes and legacies of the American South, these lyric poems couple daring engagements in topics of race and sexuality with tender reflections on personal and cultural histories. Madden's adopted home of South Carolina rises to the surface in poems set at Folly Beach, Fort Moultrie, Lake Keowee, and Middleton PLace. His interrogations of social oppression conjure the ubiquitous iconography of the bygone Confederacy, a first encounter with the miniseries Roots, and a cameo appearance by Strom Thurmond.