[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Penn State College introduced that Shara McCallum, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and former Penn State Laureate, lately obtained the celebrated Hurston/Wright Basis Legacy Award for Poetry for her 2021 e book, “No Ruined Stone.”
Named for African American writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, the Legacy Awards honor exemplary Black fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the US and world wide. Earlier award winners embrace such notable writers as Alain Mabanckou, Colson Whitehead, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, Aminatta Forna and Kwame Dawes.
“Once I wrote ‘No Ruined Stone,’ I wrote it to honor the voices of all my ancestors, voices I hear and carry. The poets who’ve obtained the prize earlier than me are writers I tremendously admire and in whose firm I’m humbled to seek out my work positioned, notably the Black girls writers whose work my e book is in dialog with, together with Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, and Evie Shockley, simply to call a couple of,” McCallum stated. “There are additionally quite a few Black girls, from the previous and within the current, poets and people not seen as poets, whose voices are by no means heard. It’s for them I’m grateful my e book has obtained this recognition.”
Initially from Jamaica, McCallum has written six books together with “No Ruined Stone,” a novel-in-verse that provides a speculative account of a section from the lifetime of well-known Scottish poet Robert Burns. In 1786, Burns organized emigrate to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation as a “bookkeeper” — a job during which he would have overseen the work of enslaved Africans. Nevertheless, largely because of the large success of his e book of poems revealed that very same yr, Burns determined to not make the transfer.
Voiced primarily by a fictive Burns in Jamaica and his fictional granddaughter, a Nineteenth-century girl born into slavery in Jamaica who migrates to Scotland and passes for white, “No Ruined Stone” explores the query “What would have occurred had Burns gone?” whereas additionally inspecting the historic relationship between Scotland and Jamaica.
McCallum’s poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Dutch, and Turkish and have been set to music by composers Marta Gentilucci and Gity Razaz. Final yr, she obtained the celebrated silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica. Much like the US’ Presidential Medal of Freedom, the award honors Jamaicans who show excellence within the fields of literature, arts, and science.
Along with the Musgrave Medal, McCallum has obtained the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for her e book, “Madwoman”; a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress; a Poetry Fellowship from the Nationwide Endowment for the Arts; the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Nonfiction; and the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for her first e book, “The Water Between Us.”
Throughout her tenure as 2021-22 Penn State Laureate, McCallum carried out writing workshops and made quite a few talking engagements all through Pennsylvania and elsewhere. She additionally showcased the works of different Pennsylvania poets on the WPSU radio program, “Poetry Second.”
An annual college honor established in 2008, the Penn State Laureate is a full-time college member within the arts or humanities who’s assigned half time for one tutorial yr to convey higher visibility to the humanities, humanities, and the College, in addition to to their very own work.
For unique article, see https://www.psu.edu/information/liberal-arts/story/shara-mccallum-receives-hurston-wright-legacy-award-poetry