It's my pleasure to announce that Doe was selected for this year's Eugene Paul Nassar Prize through Utica College. This is a post-publication award given each year to a writer living in upstate New York. Of Doe, judge Naomi Guttman wrote: My choice for the 2018 Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize is Aimée Baker’s Doe, published by The University of Akron Press. A terrible beauty is born in this book-length elegy for female victims of kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder; the presumed dead, the disappeared, and the unidentified. These last, for whom the book is named, remind us of women’s universal vulnerability as the hunted gender. In language both violent and tender, the book exhumes the cases of women from across the continent and the century, bearing witness to their spirits, prayers, and passions. Doe is a suite of gorgeously orchestrated poems that remind us not to turn away from the news. Instead, it commands us to resist injustice with the compassion that only art can bring to life. I wholly admire this haunting, stunning, and necessary book, and I endorse it with no reservations.
I would like to thank Naomi Guttman and Gary Leising for their work.
Doe is available for purchase here and here.
If you would like to review Doe, please contact me through my website contact form.