Stony Brook University Distinguished Professor Rowan Ricardo Phillips, from the College of Arts and Sciences Department of English, was recently recognized for his book, Silver, making the longlist for the National Book Award and for the Laurel Prize.
“Poetry is a grand eternal art, both timeless and timely. I’m heartened that Silver is a grain of salt in that great sea,” said Phillips. “Each book is a little something tossed into the water and shared with the world, so the fact that my work finds readers and that they respond well to it means the world to me.”
The National Book Award’s mission is to celebrate the best literature published in the United States, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture. Finalists from the longlist will be announced on October 1, 2024. The Laurel Prize, funded by the UK Poet Laureate and run by the Poetry School, is awarded to the best collection of environmental or nature poetry published that year. The Laurel Prize shortlist will be announced October 7, 2024.
“To be longlisted for the National Book Award is a huge honor, and this is the second time Professor Phillips has earned that honor (previously in 2015 for his second book, Heaven). Silver is a tremendous accomplishment and a major addition to a brilliant poetic career. There really is no other voice in poetry quite like this,” said Benedict Robinson, professor and chair in the Department of English. “On the one hand this book emerges from centuries of poetic tradition, whose discoveries Phillips takes and makes his own; on the other hand it echoes with voices in the vernacular from contemporary New York and from his upbringing in the Bronx. The truly great talent, as T.S. Eliot wrote, takes up a tradition and, in doing so, transforms it. This poetry takes up and transforms multiple traditions and cultures, and from them makes something entirely new.”
In addition to being longlisted for the National Book Award and the Laurel Prize, Silver was recently reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. Phillips’ poem “The First and Final Poem Is the Sun” also was included in Best American Poetry 2024. To culminate his recent recognition, Stony Brook University’s Department of English will host a poetry reading and reception on November 14 at 5:00 p.m. at the Stony Brook University Poetry Center.
Phillips earned his doctorate in English Literature from Brown University in 2003. He is recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports writing, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Whiting Award, and the GLCA New Writers Award. He has also been a finalist for the National Book Award for his poetry collection, Heaven, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the NAACP Award for Outstanding Work in Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
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