Congratulations to three members of Fordham University’s Department of English, who have each published a new volume of poetry—all within a month of each other (more or less).

The authors are Heather Dubrow, Ph.D., John D. Boyd, S.J., Chair in the Poetic Imagination (left), Elisabeth Frost, Ph.D., associate professor of English and Women’s Studies (center), and Janet Kaplan, Fordham’s poet-in-residence (right).

Dubrow’s book, Forms and Hollows (Cherry-Grove Press, 2011), includes poems in a range of forms as well as free verse. Its subjects also range widely, including the death of a parent, the cities of Paris, Sydney, and New York, and the everyday topics of teaching and food (herbs, bread). The publisher states that “Dubrow writes with a quiet, intimate sensibility that hits similar notes whether she is writing a dramatic monologue or a personal lyric.”

You can read more at http://www.cherry-grove.com/dubrow.html

Frost’s debut collection of poetry, All Of Us, (White Pine Press, 2011) is described as “narrative prose poems that explore misfires of communication, gaps in memory, and the simple limitations of language that cause frustration and isolation. The title poem explores a cityscape where community is vertically compressed, and strangers – who are also neighbors – appear eye-to-eye at the peep holes of their locked doors.”

For more on the book visit http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781935210238/default.aspx

Lastly, poet Janet Kaplan has published a third collection of poetry, Dreamlife of a Philanthropist (Notre Dame, 2011), which won the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, sponsored by the creative writing program at Notre Dame.. The poems and sonnets are “packed with postmodern language-leaping, modern irony and absurdity, and a poet’s ageless ear for the pleasures of the lyric and formal experimentation,” the publisher writes. The award is given annually to writers who have published at least one volume of poetry. For more information visit http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P01472

Perhaps these talented poets will show up on Thursday, March 24, when Poets Out Loud hosts its Fordham Faculty Reading at 7 p.m. in the 12th Floor Lounge of Lowenstein Center.

—Janet Sassi

The Sandeen Prize in Poetry, sponsored by Notre Dame University’s creative writing program, is awarded annually to authors who have published at least one volume of poetry. Sandeen Prize Judge Cornelius Eady said Kaplan’s book “stands out for its vitality and range, in terms of content certainly, but also because of its stylistic reach.”

Kaplan’s earlier collection,The Glazier’s Country (Fordham University Press, 2003) was the winner of the 2003 Poets Out Loud Prize.