Autumn House Press Poetry Prize

speculation, n. by Shayla Lawz won the 2020 Autumn House Poetry Prize and imagines a world beyond the prevailing public speculation on Black death. Shayla Lawz's debut collection brings together poetry, sound, and performance to challenge our spectatorship and the reproduction of the Black body. It revolves around a central question: what does it mean-in the digital age, amidst an inundation of media-to be a witness? Calling attention to the images we see in the news and beyond, these poems explore what it means to be alive and Black when the world regularly speculates on your death. The speaker, a queer Black woman, considers how often her body is coupled with images of death and violence, resulting in difficultly moving toward life. Lawz becomes the speculator by imagining what might exist beyond these harmful structures, seeking ways to reclaim the Black psyche through music, typography, and other pronunciations of the body, where expressions of sexuality and the freedom to actively reimagine is made possible. speculation, n. contends with the real-a refracted past and present-through grief, love, and loss, and it speculates on what could be real if we open ourselves to expanded possibilities.

The debut poetry collection of Charles Kell, Cage of Lit Glass, engages themes of death, incarceration, and family through a range of physical, emotional, and philosophical spaces. In startling images of beauty and violence, Kell creates a haunting world that mirrors our individual and cultural fears. Cage of Lit Glass follows multiple points of view, all haunted by various states of unease and struggle that follow them like specters as they navigate their world. Kell's poems form blurred narratives and playful experiments from our attempts to build lives from despair. A tense and insightful collection, these works will follow the reader long after the book is finished.