The Poet’s Billow has a new Special Features page, and we are so proud to be highlighting Alex Stinton the recipient of the 2014 Sophie Kerr Award, the nation’s largest undergraduate literary award.

Alexander Stinton: I think it was Joyce who remarked how Columbus made his name by being the last person to discover America. Something similar might be said of my undergraduate work. And work it was: those poems took a good deal of shaping and swearing and sleepless nights. I wanted to sound mature, I suppose, and––as an infant does with the voices of those around her––I absorbed and imitated as best I could the poets I was reading. Read more of this interview.

Joseph

On the night God’s seed lay fresh
in the somewhat swanlike
egg beneath Mary’s navel,

who was it
rustling for a bite to eat,
unleavened bread, some dates?

Whose hand went unmoved but
hopeful on the belly
as the other tapped the keys

of his cell phone:
“You’ll never believe. . . .” Continue Reading