Red Dirt Jesus

Ray McManus’s third collection of poetry titled Red Dirt Jesus won the first annual Marick Press Poetry Prize for 2010, and it will be published March 2011! The judge for this year’s competition was Alicia Ostriker. Ostriker, author of 11 books of poetry, is a major American poet and critic who has been twice nominated for a National Book Award. Here is what she had to say about Red Dirt Jesus:

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Red Dirt Jesus:

A unique American voice enters poetry here, emerging from monkey grass and moon, from the ditch between father (or Father) and son (or Son).  It is crisp, laconic, parodic, mysterious.  It blesses the diesel and the mud-flap sinner.  Maybe it is Tom Sawyer's dark sexy side.  Speaking of the cycles of life and death, it says "Before the end,/ everything is fiction."  It says, "Buzzards gotta eat too,/ same as a worm."  And it also promises that "everything unwilling/ to change will die, everything/ that changes dies only a little."

Alicia Ostriker

For information about Alicia Ostriker, please visit her website at: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~ostriker/home.htm

Marick Press seeks out and publishes the best new work from an eclectic range of aesthetics —work that is technically accomplished, distinctive in style, and thematically fresh. The press publishes 6-8 titles annually in both hardcover and paperback, covering a broad spectrum of topics that range from literary non-fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, fiction and reprint of previously published titles. For more information about Marick Press, please visit http://www.marickpress.com/.

About the award, Ray had this to say:

“I’m honored to have won the 2010 Marick Press Poetry Prize. I have been a fan of the press for some time now, and I have really enjoyed the titles they have published. I am very excited by all of this. I’m especially excited to hear that Alicia Ostriker was the judge. I have loved her work for many years. She is a god as far as I’m concerned. I also want to thank my wife – Lindsay Green McManus, and my mentors Ed Madden and Kwame Dawes from the University of South Carolina, whose thoughtful and direct criticism helped me to shape the collection into what it is today. Their encouragement gave me the confidence to send Red Dirt Jesus out.”

Ray McManus is an Assistant Professor of English in the Division of Arts and Letters at USC Sumter. For more information about Ray McManus, please visit his website at: http://www.raymcmanuspoetry.com or the USC Sumter website.