Dogfish Head Poetry Prize awarded
The 20th Dogfish Head Poetry Prize was presented Dec. 10 at Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton.
Jamie Brown, founder, and Dogfish Head CEO Sam Calagione, co-founder of the prize, joined Mariah Calagione, Andrew Greeley and prize coordinator Linda Blaskey to welcome Greg Lobas, winner of the 20th Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, for his collection, “Left of Center.”
Retired from his career as a fire department captain, Lobas and his wife Meg drove up for the event from their home in the foothills of western North Carolina.
Michael S. Glaser, a noted poet and former poet laureate of Maryland who served as contest judge, said, “’Left of Center’ offers poems that are stunning and uniquely unusual – focused as they are on the exterior and interior experiences of a firefighter.”
Capt. Johnny Hopkins, Milton Fire Department chief, attended with two of his fellow firefighters, rescue lieutenant Jim Miller and safety officer Jerry Kiser, and all gave Lobas’s evocative poems a thumbs-up.
Cathy Smith Bowers said, “Greg Lobas, in language both sinewy and lyrical, thrusts his reader into the private relationships and working lives of firefighters and frontline rescuers. I've never read anything like it.”
Brown opened the program reminiscing about the genesis of the prize, first presented by Sam Calagione at the annual John Milton Memorial Celebration of Poets and Poetry that was held for 10 years in the Milton Theatre. Several past prize winners attended, including Linda Blaskey, 2008; David P. Kozinski, 2009; Sherry Gage Chappelle, 2011; Susan Rothbard, 2020; and Anne Yarbrough, 2021.
Milton Mayor John Collier and several of the first readers involved in the selection process also attended, including Keri Ann Ebert, The Broadkill Review poetry editor. Ebert’s poetry chapbook, “Alphabet of Mo(u)rning,” was just released.
The prize, initially awarded only to Delmarva poets, included publication of a chapbook-length manuscript, $100 and two cases of beer. However, it wasn’t long before submissions came from North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Maine; and each winner received $500, an overnight stay at the Dogfish Inn in Lewes, the winning poetry published as a book by Broadkill River Press of Milton, and two cases of beer.
Jennifer Sweeney said, “This is a poetry of deep witness and deep connection, as Lobas seamlessly writes from the threshold of what survives and what perishes. At the heart of this work is the communion of those whose work is saving what can be saved.”
The 20th Dogfish Head Poetry Prize brings the competition to a close.
