Danez Smith. Star Tribune file photo
“Summer, somewhere,” a sequence of poems by Minneapolis poet Danez Smith, has won the inaugural Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T.S. Eliot Foundation. The award comes with a $20,000 prize. It is given annually for award is given annually for a unified and complete sequence of poems. This year's judges were Linda Gregerson, Ishion Hutchinson, and Jana Prikryl.
The "summer, somewhere" sequence is from Smith’s collection, “Don’t Call Us Dead,” published last fall by Minneapolis’ Graywolf Press. The book was a finalist for a National Book Award.
Smith, 28, was born in St. Paul and now lives in Minneapolis. They started out as a spoken-word performance artist and have performed all over the world. Smith has also won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
Laurie Hertzel is senior editor for books at the Star Tribune, where she has worked since 1996. She is the author of "News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist," winner of a Minnesota Book Award.
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