Associate Professor of English Dr. Gary L. McDowell received the twenty-fifth annual White Pine Press Poetry Award for his new poetry manuscript, “Aflame.”
White Pine Press was founded in 1973, and the organization has published a number of the world’s leading poets. Selected by final judge Sean Thomas Dougherty, McDowell’s book will be published in the fall of 2020, and he will receive a cash prize of $1,000.
Doughtery shared, “Gary McDowell writes ‘light can travel so fast / but observation happens immediately’ which is probably insight into his great gift as a poet: McDowell’s ability to see into the world of things and work with them or against them. ‘Aflame’ takes this level of observation and puts it to work in both sinuous and staccato’d lines about the body and breath of his wife; his children; suburbia; a state park; aging; our political rights; and the city of Nashville where he lives.”
