Please note: This post was last updated on 14 April 2021- gmc
The very first South Carolina Poetry Archives Book Prize was won by a Beaufort resident and poet, Warren Slesinger.
Gilbert Allen, poet and publisher of the Ninety-Six Press established the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize in 2012. The criteria for entering was a little different than for most poetry contests. Poets over age 21, not enrolled in a degree program, with residency in the state for at least 5 years and who had had at least 5 poems published in national or regional literary magazines, as long as they had not been published heretofore by Ninety-Six Press, were eligible to enter the free contest.
Slesinger won with his book, The Evening Light, about which Allen writes:
The Evening Light is more than the sum of its individual parts. Its three movements ... seem graceful and intricately harmonious. Slesinger doesn't write the same poem over and over again to create the mere illusion of 'voice.' Instead, he weaves together personal medications, images of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the warning implicit in such words as 'Lifeboat' and 'Scrapescape' to provide readers with a tapestry of moral insight and artistic achievement." (p. ix)Here's an excerpt from "Harbor, Beaufort, South Carolina" illustrated by an image from our Lucille Hasell Culp Collection.
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| Lucille Hasell Culp Collection, All rights reserved |
Harbor
Beaufort, South Carolina
Yesterday, the diesel engine of a shrimp boat
throbbed in the harbor, windows rattled in a shack
and gulls squabbled over garbage on the shore.
Make an appointment to visit the Research Room to read the rest of this poem and other poems included in The Evening Light. Call # SC 811.59 SLE 2013 (The BDC has the only copy of this title in the entire SCLENDS consortium).
To see more of Ms. Culp's photography, visit the Lowcountry Digital Library http://bit.ly/2kFjRsP
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