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Wine and Viticulture Undergraduate Wins Academy of American Poets Award

Well-known Los Angeles poet Suzanne Lummis has chosen Wine and Viticulture undergraduate Madeleine Mori (Milbrae) as winner of Cal Poly’s 2013 Academy of American Poets Contest. Mori will receive a $100 award from the Academy for her poem “Ten Cents.” 

English undergraduates Cate Harkins (San Luis Obispo) and Eli Williams (Morro Bay) earned honorable mention for their poems “Dirty Laundry” and “Cut & Dry” respectively. 

A poem about American folk singer Karen Dalton, Mori’s “Ten Cents” renders the hard choices an artist must make when stepping out of a conventional life to pursue her vocation. 

“‘Ten Cents’ is about the potential ecstasies of making art, when we don’t know if we can succeed or not,” said English professor Kevin Clark, organizer of the contest. 

“It's as if Madeline brings word from the across the veil,” said Clark. “Her poems seem to channel our dream lives. Each line is melodic, half in this life, half in another realm. “ 

“She’s a special writer, a natural, who will no doubt succeed on her own terms down the line. I’m deeply impressed with her writing, especially since she’s so young to be writing this kind of difficult highly sophisticated poetry.” 

Honorable mention Harkin’s poem “Dirty Laundry” evokes the interior life of a woman who is so broke that she only has enough money for one load of laundry. The act of mixing whites and colored fabric together may seem simple, almost ordinary, but, according to Clark, the event is rife with poignancy. 

“Over the years Cate Harkin has been a winner in many of our contests,” he said, “and she’s simply expert at delineating the most telling moments in a life. She’s also a master of elegant language.” 

Funny and psychologically revealing, honorable mention William’s poem “Cut & Dry” details the sexual tension and resulting embarrassment a young man experiences while getting his hair cut by a vivacious, older hair stylist. 

Clark also noted that Eli Williams earned a prize this past winter in the campus wide Al Landwehr Creative Writing Contest. 

“Eli is one of those writers who are simultaneously comic and serious at the same time. He knows how to marshal a bemused tone in order to convey the foolishness of human behavior. His poems entertain on the surface level while hitting home subconsciously.” 

A longtime resident of Los Angeles, judge Suzanne Lummis is the founder and director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival. She is principal editor of Grand Passion: The Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond. Her poetry collections include two books, Idiosyncrasies and In Danger

“We were exceptionally fortunate to have such an important figure in the California poetry world be our judge this year,” said Clark. 

The Academy of American Poets contest is sponsored by the Cal Poly English Department and the Academy of American Poets, which is a longstanding advocate for the art of poetry and is located in New York City. 

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