Baltimore-born poet, Aafa Michael Weaver won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award this month, given annually to an outstanding collection by a US poet, for his 12th collection, ‘The Government of Nature‘.
Coverage of the prize in newspapers and magazines has focused on Weaver’s humble beginnings and non-traditional educational route – starting out working on the factory floor at Bethlehem Steel, writing poetry, earning a National Endowment for the Arts and full scholarship to attend Brown University in his mid-30’s, becoming a playwright, a Fulbright scholar and eventually a university professor.
Most people go to university to obtain permission to write – I love that Aafa Michael Weaver did it the other way around; he wrote first and everything else came from that.
I’m ashamed to say I was not familiar with his work before reading of the award and so went searching for his poems. My favourite, The Starlings, you can listen to at Poetry.org; here’s another piece I love. Continue reading
a dreaming skin 