Luisa A. Igloria awarded 2nd Place in 2018 Bridgport Prize

We're so proud of Luisa A. Igloria​ , who has won 2nd place for poetry in the 2018 Bridgport Prize, an international creative writing competition, and was judged this year by Daljit Nagra, Monica Ali, and Kamila Shamsie. Luisa is the author of two books published by Phoenicia: "The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Midlife Crisis" (2018) and "Night Willow" (2014). Congratulations, Luisa!!

Poetry Judge Daljit Nagra wrote this about Luisa's poem:
“My second prize, ‘what we learn from movies about surviving a nuclear blast’, dramatizes the terrifying consequences of a nuclear explosion. The witty parallel of an old film with an actual situation that occurred earlier in the year shows desperate nurture and human incapability. The form of the poem, with its teeming line endings and line openings, enact its own anxiety and locks us into the chamber of the language. The poem makes us feel breathless and miasmic as it gathers momentum and brings us into a series of vivid and appalling images. We are reminded that the role of poetry is to provoke, to shock, to warn, and this poem achieves all these terms with deft authority. We are left ‘crouched in the cellar or bathroom’, as was the case earlier in the year, when Hawaiians were told for 38 minutes, that they were under nuclear attack.” 

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