Salisbury University Senior Wins Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry

Newswise — SALISBURY, MD---A Salisbury University student raised on the Eastern Shore has won one of the United States’ most prominent literary prizes.  

Emma DePanise, who grew up in Queenstown, MD, is winner of the 2018 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. The national honor, part of the Nimrod Literary Awards, is open to poets of all experience levels. For example, this year’s runner up, Megan Merchant, is an editor and author of three books.  Last year’s Neruda Prize winner, author and teacher Mark Wagenaar, also has published two collections, and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, among others.  Both Merchant and Wagenaar are award-winning poets. The 21-year-old DePanise is a senior Honors student majoring in English.

In the competition, all submissions are adjudicated without the author’s name and must be unpublished, also assuring anonymity. The judge for the 2018 Neruda Prize was renowned poet and playwright Patricia Smith, author of Blood Dazzler (about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath), and other award-winning works.     

It’s unusual for undergraduate students to publish, let alone win a prize of this stature.  “One of the strengths of SU’s creative writing program is we are encouraged and tutored, while we’re students, in how to publish,” said DePanise. “We not only study great writers and develop our own portfolio, we are taught about the work required to be a literary professional.”

DePanise’s poems, “Dry Season” and five others have been selected for publication in the Nimrod International Journal. “Some are historically or scientifically based, some personal, some are basically conversations with works of other authors,” she said.  Her poetry had already been published in such journals as Potomac Review and Little Patuxent Review.

“Emma DePanise is one of the finest young poets I have ever had the privilege of working with,” said Dr. John Nieves, head of SU’s creative writing program and a poet himself.  “Her poems are startling lyrics with deft line work, resonant imagery, poignant and nuanced emotional tenor and impeccable craft. I’m sure we will be reading her work for years to come.”

“I naturally write elegy—about losses, about beauty, about what’s missing,” she said. “Dry Season,” for example, juxtaposes silent expectation of a ominous phone call (inspired by her grandmother’s cancer) against the search for an alligator in a Florida wetland. The poem explodes with presence in its final lines.

She credits her grandparents, who lived in Baltimore, with modeling powers of observation which have served her well as a writer. “They taught me, don’t ignore what’s around you. You are in the world,” she said. For them, it was awareness of the plight of the homeless, and weekly the couple would feed the poor around them.  This social consciousness carried over into her University life, where she wrote a top Honors College essay on reducing sexual assault on college campuses and has been engaged about women’s issues nationally.

An omnivorous writer, she even enjoyed doing research papers for her general education classes, whose subject matter also bleeds into her poetry: “Did Anna Bertha Ludwig Ask to Be Seen through?” is a meditation on the first medical X-ray in 1895 of the hand of the wife of Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Rontgen. Her poem, “Late, January,” ostensibly about an unwanted pregnancy, was written in response to another poem, “January,” by one of her favorite poets, Daniel Simko.

DePanise credits her high school teachers for instilling a love of writing--and music. When she first came to SU, she initially planned to major in music education.  (She played oboe with the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra.) Poetry, with an emphasis on rhythm, spoken performance and sound, allows her to express her innate musicality, as well as blur lines between fact, fiction and personal expression, which she likes. And SU’s team approach to studying writing has given not only support, but a sense of community.    

When Dr. Elizabeth Curtin, who teaches rhetoric and professional writing in SU’s English Department, read a first essay from DePanise, she immediately told her young student, “I hope you’re going to do something with your life that involves writing.”  This October, when she goes to Oklahoma to be officially presented the Neruda Prize, she also will participate in Nimrod’s Conference for Readers and Writers as a panelist on “Finding Time, Finding Balance” in  a life devoted to writing and, with Merchant, present a workshop on “Using Emotion Effectively, Bravely and Responsibly” in poetry.

After graduating in December (a semester early with a stellar GPA), she plans to pursue a Master of Fine Arts and eventually teach. For now, despite the accolades, she is remarkably grounded, which she attributes, in part, to a strong sense of place. (She grew up in an old farmhouse in Queenstown with her father, a professional photographer; mother, a home child care provider; and two sisters.) Her close-knit family has provided a secure foundation for literary exploration and bravery.    

“It is an honor to know and work with her,” said Nieves.

For more information visit the SU Website or call 410-543-6030.