WHITE PINE PRESS

White Pine Press is pleased to announce that Michael McGriff has been awarded the thirtieth

Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize for his manuscript Inquest. Selected by final judge Gail Wronsky, the book will be published in the fall of 2025. Mr. McGriff also receives a cash prize of one thousand dollars.
 

The contest runner-ups were Boneyard Heresies, by Tina Schumann and Circumference, by Kyoko Uchida. The other finalists included Maura Simon, Jeanne Wagner, Michael Moos,  Stephen Knauth, Ava Wing, Suzanne Cleary, and George Looney.

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The Judge, Gail Wronsky, says of Inquest:

 

“What better way to enter a zone of negative capability, a zone John Keats believed was necessary to the creation of art, than to enter a self-imposed state of unknowing and remain there by asking questions that have no answers? In the marvel-filled collection of poems that is Inquest, each poem, paying homage to Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions, is made up entirely of questions—questions that move in and out of surrealism, social witnessing, and lyric self-expression. Michael McGriff, an accomplished and dare I say brilliant poet, has written a book of poems that begin and end in negative capability, along the way delighting the reader with the stunning and relentless inventiveness and fecundity of his imagination. I am in awe.”