2020 Sundog Poetry Book Award Winner

the blue-collar sun by Lucas Farrell

Lucas Farrell lives in Townshend, Vermont, where he and his wife own and operate Big Picture Farm, a small hillside goat dairy and award-winning farmstead confectionery. His first book of poems, The Many Woods of Grief (University of Massachusetts Press), was awarded the Juniper Prize for Poetry. He has two daughters.

Runners-Up

Little Fish, by Lorrie Goldensohn
This Topia, by Partridge Boswell

The world is hard to find once you start looking for it’—from its beginning this book activates such a search (and sometimes wants to walk away from it) in such a startling way that by the breath-taking final section the poet finds himself searching for his relationship to a fish hook. Which of all objects looks most like a question mark, so the search becomes not one for answers but for the questions themselves, that Rilkean stance. Questions carry with them the obligation to go on, to carry on in any direction they may take us, and for the sake of the art of poetry Lucas Farrell does just that. His is a mind that never stops moving.

-Mary Ruefle, final judge

2020 Finalists

Winner: Michael Fleming, Bags and Tools

Runner-up: Julia C. Alter, Some Dark Familiar

Runner-up: Partridge Boswell, The River Holds its Breath

Finalist: Charles Barash

Finalist: Ralph Culver

Finalist: Arlene Distler

Finalist: Michael Fleming

Finalist: Darren Higgins

Finalist: Raymond Hudson

Finalist: Meg Reynolds

Finalist: Margaret Rogal

Finalist: Adrian Williams