Splice

Winner of the 2024 Louise Bogan Award, Anthony Borruso's Splice melds contemporary pop culture with enduring questions. This dynamic, sometimes darkly humorous montage of identity, chronic illness, and artistic homage examines the concept of selfhood. Navigating a disorienting experience of a chronic illness where thoughts "get stopped up / like an autumn gutter," the speaker shape-shifts into a multitude of voices that reconcile and congeal a fragmented existence. Splice ultimately explores our constant cycle of reinvention and imitation, an engine that both holds us back and moves us forward.