Poetry
Donald Platt
Donald Platt (Ph.D., University of Utah, 1995) is the author of eight volumes of poetry: Swansdown (Grid Books, 2022), One Illuminated Letter of Being (Red Mountain Press, 2020), Man Praying (Parlor Press / Free Verse Editions, 2017), Tornadoesque (CavanKerry Press, 2016), Dirt Angels (New Issues Press, 2009), My Father Says Grace (Arkansas University Press, 2007), Cloud Atlas (Purdue University Press, 2002), and Fresh Peaches, Fireworks, & Guns (Purdue University Press, 1994). His ninth book, Tender Voyeur, will be published by Grid Books in 2025. His fine-press, limited-edition chapbook Leap Second at the Turn of the Millennium was published in 1999 by the Center for Book Arts in New York City. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The New Republic, Nation, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ironwood, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Notre Dame Review, Gulf Coast, Sou’wester, New Ohio Review, Nimrod International Journal, Epoch, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Cream City Review, VOLT, River Styx, Third Coast, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Diode, 32 Poems, BLOOM, Michigan Quarterly Review, AGNI, BOMB Magazine, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Plume, Wallace Stevens Journal, William and Mary Review, Meridian, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Laurel Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Water~Stone Review, Poetry Northwest, New American Writing, Chelsea, Rattle, Black Warrior Review, Seneca Review, Cincinnati Review, Florida Review, New England Review, Salmagundi, Western Humanities Review, Field, Five Points, Fence, Adroit Journal, Iowa Review, Southwest Review, Tin House, Southern Review, Lana Turner, New Criterion, Yale Review, and Atlantic Monthly, as well as in The Best American Poetry 2000, 2006, and 2015. His poems have been republished on the Poetry Daily and Verse Daily websites. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three Pushcart Prizes, the Paumanok Poetry Prize, the “Discovery”/The Nation Prize, two Verna Emery Poetry Prizes, and the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize. A professor in Purdue University’s English Department since 2000, he offers courses in the writing of poetry at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
2024 Poetry Shortlist: Swansdown
Poems that address in rapturous, though sometimes stricken, language the process of getting older. Such maturation includes the death of a beloved younger brother for whom the poet wrote a number of elegies that start “Swansdown.” The middle section focuses on the poet’s ex-wife’s rheumatoid arthritis and the long shadow that the deaths of friends and family casts. The book ends, though, on spring’s first crocuses and the persistent beauty of the natural world.
