2014 Berkshire Prize Winner

Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that Jeffrey Harrison has selected Jenny Molberg’s Marvels of the Invisible as winner of the 2014 Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry.

Jenny Molberg
Jenny Molberg

Jenny Molberg earned her B.A. at Louisiana State University and her M.F.A. at American University. Her work has appeared in North American Review, The New Guard, Copper Nickel, Mississippi Review, and other journals. Her poem, “Narrative,” won the 2013 Third Coast Poetry Prize. Currently, she is Production Editor at American Literary Review and a doctoral candidate at the University of North Texas.

In selecting Marvels of the Invisible Jeffrey Harrison had this to say: “Jenny Molberg’s Marvels of the Invisible is that rare, compelling thing: a collection that feels as though it has arisen out of an actual life, celebrating and struggling with the issues and events of that life, and making of them a beautiful, fraught sense. These poems bring together vastly different ways of seeing the world—the scientific, the spiritual, the personal, the historical, the oneiric—through a synthesizing and transformative imagination that is attuned to the details of the physical world while seeking realms beyond the visible, beyond what can be said but is well worth trying to say, ‘spreading/ a strange, unutterable music’ onto the page.

Finalists:

Jaime Brunton of Lincoln, Nebraska for Reclaimed
Tina Cane of Rumford, Rhode Island for archipelago
J.K. Daniels of Arlington, Virginia for Prodigal
Elyse Fenton of Portland, Oregon for Sweet Insurgent
Kim Garcia of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts for The Brighter House
Julie Hanson of Cedar Rapids, Iowa for Proximate
Michael Homolka of New York, New York for Black Willow Are You a Doctor?
Virginia Konchan of Chicago, Illinois for Annotating Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Chris Mink of Tallahassee, Florida for All The Devils
Laurel Nakanishi of Miami, Florida for The World So Far
Nina Puro of Brooklyn, New York for The Winter Palace
Juliet Rodeman of Columbia, Missouri for The Voice of that Singing
Steven Teref of Chicago, Illinois for The Foreign Object
Kara van de Graaf of Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Dear Satellite
Mark Wagenaar of Denton, Texas for The Body Distances (A Hundred Blackbirds Rising)
Maura Way of Greensboro, North Carolina for Bye Week
Anna Welch of Erie, Pennsylvania for Noah’s Woods

We offer our boundless gratitude to our judge, Jeffrey Harrison, for giving all of us the benefit of his extraordinary ear and eye. Warmest congratulations to the winner, to all of this year’s finalists, and once again, and perhaps most importantly, to the many poets who permitted us the pleasure of reading their submissions. There are so many terrific first and second books coming our way, and we are abundantly grateful for the opportunity to read so much compelling work.


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