We are SO EXCITED for and incredibly proud of our former Associate Editor, Nick DePascal, who won the West End Press Poetry Prize. We couldn’t say it better, so here are the details straight from the horse’s (read Press Release‘s) mouth:
The winner of the West End Press Poetry Prize is Nick DePascal of Albuquerque for his manuscript, Before You Became Improbable. DePascal is currently teaching in the English department at the University of New Mexico.
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Sugar House Review, The Emerson Review, The Los Angeles Review, The Laurel Review, Aesthetix, ditch, and more. His essays and reviews have appeared in BoldType, The Rumpus, Pleiades, Rain Taxi, and Tucson Weekly, among others.
DePascal’s poems situate us alongside a man and wife living in an old house through the seasons. The cycle moves with the weather and the rise and fall of human aspirations. The poet speaks of his attraction to pain and death, and that is to be found here. Also, however, a notion of experience suggesting that one survives, however changed, as the cycle continues. Youth and maturity collapse into one another.
WOW. We can’t wait. Congratulations Nick!
