Greeley native and University of Northern Colorado writing instructor J. Michael Martinez has won the 2009 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Martinez’s book-length poetry collection, “Heredities,” to be published next spring by Louisiana State University Press, beat nearly 1,000 other entries to win the coveted award. Juan Felipe Herrera, a prominent poet, was the judge for the award.
” ‘Heredities’ breaks away from four decades of inquiry into cultural identity,” Herrera commented on the collection. “Martinez’s exhilarating descent into the unspoken — lit by metaphysical investigations, physiological charts, and meta-translations of Hernán Cortes’ accounts of his conquests — gives voice to a dismembered continental body buried long ago. This body, though flayed and fractured, rises and sings.”
The academy annually recognizes one emerging American poet who has not previously published a book of poetry. The award includes first-book publication, a $5,000 prize and a month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center. The award was established in 1975 to encourage the work of emerging poets and to enable publication of a poet’s first book.
Martinez’s poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review and Crab Orchard Review, among others, and the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing. He is the recipient of the 2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize and is co-editor and co-founder of Breach Press.
He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
