"Jampole is absolutely unique in the way he expresses his material, especially with regard to sound, meter and rhythm."
– Michael Wurster, Small Press Review
"This book is amazing."
– Gloria Mindock, editor, Cervena Barva Press
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Shelby Stephenson's Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl Shelby Stephenson has been named North Carolina’s new poet laureate
An intense and heart-breaking poetic narrative which, in its exploration of historical and personal materials, holds affinities to the work of Susan Howe and to James Agee’s classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Family Matters is a strenuous questioning — and exposure — of the fictions of ownership, whether of persons or places, graves or farms.
- Allen Grossman, final judge,
2008 Bellday Prize competition.
"A reader never knows what is coming next in the poems of Success of the Seed Plants—they move as one would cross a stream, by adroitly leaping from rock to rock. The mood here therefore feels risky, as the narrator gambles against falling. I found her mental agility exhilarating."
– Lucia Perillo, final judge, 2010 Bellday Prize competition
"Robbins can spin a hitherto-undiscovered cosmos out of a single, wayward proposition, but he never loses footing in the radiant, mortal, given world."
– Linda Gregerson, Final Judge
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2012 Bellday Prize Award Winner: Dennis Finnell
"Pie 8 is casual with the big stuff, a little tough, maybe, but also a little sorry about that. Like America? These poems feel real – while making you wonder what 'real' could possibly mean."
