Raymond McDaniel has won the 2015 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually to the author of the best poem or group of poems appearing that year in the Michigan Quarterly Review. His poem “Claire Lenoir,” appeared in the Fall 2015 issue.
This year’s judge, Paisley Rekdal, writes:
The poem marvelously captures, in tone and form, the very essence of the uncanny: one of the poem’s central subjects. The poem renders the process through which we gain knowledge of ourselves and others both mysterious and terrifying at once, recalling for me Howard Baker’s plaintive question during the Watergate trials: What did you know, and when did you know it?
The Laurence Goldstein Prize was established in 2002 by a generous gift from the Office of the President of the University of Michigan and is awarded in the amount of $500. A different judge is selected each year by the university.
Raymond McDaniel is from Florida. “Claire Lenoir” will appear in The Cataracts in 2017 from Coffee House Press, where he has also published Special Powers and Abilities in 2013, Saltwater Empire in 2008, and Murder (a Violet) in 2004, which won the National Poetry Series competition. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he teaches at the University of Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter @RaymondMcDaniel.
