ODU Professor Earns Literary Award
November 16, 2018
Luisa A. Igloria
By Joe Garvey
Luisa A. Igloria, a professor in the creative writing program at Old Dominion University, won second place in this year's Bridport Prize poetry competition for her poem "What we learn from movies about surviving a nuclear blast."
Her poem was selected from more than 5,300 entries in the United Kingdom-based competition. She received a $1,277 prize.
"The poem makes us feel breathless and miasmic as it gathers momentum and brings us into a series of vivid and appalling images," judge Daljit Nagra said.
Igloria, who directed the M.F.A. creative writing program at ODU from 2009 to 2015, was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University (2018). She won the United Kingdom's 2015 Resurgence Prize, the world's first major award for ecopoetry. Former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey selected Igloria's chapbook "What is Left of Wings, I Ask"as the 2018 recipient of the Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Poetry Chapbook award.
Igloria is the author of the full-length works "The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis," "Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser" (selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize), "Night Willow," "The Saints of Streets" and "Juan Luna's Revolver," as well as nine other books. She also wrote the chapbooks "Haori,""Check & Balance" and "Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass."
Further information and selected poems can be found on her website at www.luisaigloria.com.
Established in 1973, the Bridport competition attracted more than 12,000 entries from 79 countries. It gives awards in 34 categories.
