The Honickman Foundation

2000 APR / Honickman First Book Prize Winner

Anne Marie Macari, Ivory Cradle

"Winning this prize changes your life. You 'are' a poet. It gave me the confidence that I could finally get where I wanted to go. I had just finished an MFA program and this prize jumpstarted my entire writing career."

Anne Marie Macari, 2000 Book Prize recipient, experienced not only an outward shift due to the new-found exposure her work was receiving, but also experienced an internal shift.

"I always knew that I was going to write, but actually getting published gave me validation that I was doing something worthwhile. Each book has a life of its own, represents something important, and is a statement of yourself as a writer. Each book leads to the next book."

excerpt from "Airport Hotel"

My son said, "You're a red
cardinal and I'm a nuthatch."
He was right that I might leave
a trail of small-time terror,
that there was something wrong
in my red breast and I
was soaked in my own blood,
that my singing pierced the air,
all my humility drained away
as I vowed to fight
forgiveness at all costs, and to keep
my wings moving.

For Anne Marie, winning the prize did lead to more books. She has since published two more in 2005 and 2008, and is currently working on a fourth. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and in 2005 she won the James Dickey Award for Poetry from Five Points Magazine. She has taught poetry workshops, directed the Low-Residency MFA Program at New England College, and is currently the director of the Drew University Low-Residency MFA Program in Poetry & Poetry in Translation.

"This is a particularly wonderful prize, and it made a huge difference to me. I was very honored to win, and Robert Creeley, that year's judge, wrote a beautiful introduction to my book. He interpreted the title in a very complex way…it is always interesting to see how other people interpret your work."


Audio

About the Prize

Recent Poetry Winners

In This Section