12/19/2019
Norfolk Poet D. L. Pearlman Wins 17th Annual Dogfish Head Poetry Prize
(December 14, 2019— Lewes, Delaware) D. L. Pearlman, native son of Norfolk and Adjunct Professor of English at Tidewater Community College, has been selected as the winner of the 2019 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize for his manuscript, “Normal They Na**lm the Cottonfields.” The Prize was presented on December 14th at the Dogfish Inn, in Lewes, DE, by a company official. The annual Prize consists of publication of the manuscript by the Broadkill River Press, 10 copies of the published book, $500 in prize money, two cases of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ale, and two nights’ stay at the Dogfish Inn.
Normal They Na**lm the Cottonfields is a tour de force examination of many of the events which have shaped both the author and the world in which he grew up, and in which he continues to make his way, sometimes in spite of the obstacles which he perceives with a clarity of vision unmatched by myriad lesser talents. The poems in this collection serve much like the na**lm used to burn off the leaves of the cotton plants and open the bolls by presenting the reader with what would, in a more mundane poets’ hands, merely be hinted at or concealed.
Of Normal They Na**lm the Cottonfields, Joseph Millar, author of Kingdom, who was judge of this year’s competition, says of Pearlman’s work that “the poems in D. L. Pearlman’s collection are filled with the experience of this world. I admire the variety of their subject matter, the reminiscences of a traveling photographer, and especially their gritty images of working life in a countryside worn down by time and weather, its crops and dirt roads, its shoreline and bays and woods.”
Grace Cavalieri, radio host of “The Poet and the Poem,” and current Maryland Poet Laureate, writes of his work that Pearlman “sees every detail of grandeur in our failing earth, and makes the reader feel the rubble under his feet, . . A world ripe with . . . Richness and wreckage.” Pearlman’s work is, she continues, “large with social conscience and awareness. . .This is real writing. This is real poetry.”
Stephen Scott Whitaker, a poet, author and editor, and member of the National Book Critics Circle, says that Pearlman “transforms America’s broken and littered landscapes into a song of woe and loss. . . (He) pulls no punches,” and that the author “offers glimpses of hope in a world where life and struggle are synonymous, a country littered with garbage, both real and metaphorical...”
This is the 17th presentation of the annual Dogfish Head Poetry Prize and was created by Sam Calagione (a literature major in college), CEO of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales, which is open to residents of North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and the District of Columbia. Publication of the winning manuscript is supported in part by The Cape Gazette. Printed on recycled paper and priced at $15.00, readers who wish to acquire a copy of Normal They Na**lm the Cottonfields can purchase the book on-line at www.broadkillriverpress.com
