Congratulations to Bellingham poet Susan J. Erickson, who has won the 2015 Brick Road Poetry Press Contest for her manuscript Lauren Bacall Shares a Limousine!
You may remember Susan’s discussion of her persona poems in my interview with her last year. At that time, the manuscript was titled “Above Nerve,” after the Emily Dickinson lines “If your Nerve, deny you– | Go above your Nerve–”. The new title highlights the book’s identity as a collection of persona poems: a lively and powerful assortment of poems in the voices of women both well- and lesser-known, including Georgia O’Keeffe; Frida Kahlo; Lucy Audubon; Amelia Earhart; Kitty Wright; Mamah Borthwick Cheney, mistress of Frank Lloyd Wright; and Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, who disguised herself as a man and fought in the Union Army.
Go to Susan’s interview for links to enjoy several of these poems available online, and to the Brick Road Facebook announcement to read another poem from the collection, “Rapunzel Brings Her Women’s Studies Class to the Tower.” And for more of Susan’s thoughts about persona poems, check out the guest column she wrote for Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides blog at Writer’s Digest: “The Many Faces of Persona Poems.”
Susan’s book is slated for release in time for the AWP Convention in February 2017. I’ll share more exciting details as the book makes its way through the publication process. Congratulations, Susan, and we look forward to reading more!
Jennifer Bullis 