USC student Hannah Sanghee Park has been selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout as the Academy of American Poets’ 2014 Walt Whitman Award winner.
“The poems in The Same-Different, beginning with a set of gnomic sonnets, tell it slant, then slanted,” stated Armantrout. “They are so full of chiasmus, pun, and near-rhyme that their figures twist back on themselves like strands of DNA or a staircase by Escher. They are mirror-bright. This book is a literally dazzling debut.”
As the winner, Park gets her first book published, a $5,000 award, a month-long residency at Vermont Studio Center, as well as promotion on Poets.org. The Academy will also purchase thousands of copies of her book and distribute them to members.
Park joins the likes of previous recipients including: Nicole Cooley, Suji Kwock Kim, Eric Pankey, Matt Rasmussen, and Alberto Ríos.