The ALSC is proud to announce that longstanding member and Former Poet Laureate Daniel Hoffman was recently awarded the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award for his latest collection, The Whole Nine Yards. The prize, established to honor Louisiana State University Press’s director emeritus, Les Phillabaum (1936-2009), has been bestowed in past years on Marilyn Nelson, Henry Taylor, Elizabeth Seidel Morgan, and Betty Adcock. The Whole Nine Yards offers poems spanning Hoffman’s long career. They explore violence and transcendence in realistic, gothic, and comic modes, as they tell of war, cold war, domestic violence, bureaucratic oppression, and a compassionate rescue at sea. Searching and lyrical suites celebrate the births of children, recoup a year in wartime France, and meditate on life and death, the seen and the unseen. The result is a compelling collection from a distinguished poet. Hoffman has been the recipient of the Hazlett Memorial Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, and several grants and fellowships. His collection Brotherly Love was nominated for the National Book Award as was his critical study, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe.
The Whole Nine Yards will be published by LSU Press in April.
– Chelsea Bell