Matthew Siegel, Christina Stoddard

APRIL 23, 7:00PM, HELEN C WHITE RM 6191 (600 N PARK, M) — The Program in Creative Writing and University of Wisconsin Press present 2015 Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizewinners Matthew Siegel & Christina Stoddard.

The University of Wisconsin Press and UW-Madison's Program in Creative Writing present poets Matthew Siegel and Christina Stoddard, winners of the Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Christina Stoddard will read from her Brittingham Prize-winning collection, HIVE. Matthew Siegel will read from his Felix Pollak Prize-winning collection, BLOOD WORK.

Hive is a remarkable debut collection of poems about brutality, exaltation, rebellion, and allegiance. Written in the voice of a teenage Mormon girl, these poems chronicle an inheritance of daily violence and closely guarded secrets. "The buzz grows into a more and more menacing hum in a journey through rapes and murders, through stray bullets and serial killers, through mental and physical and emotional and sexual and even spiritual abuse until the voice speaking the poems seems to come from a ‘mouth / fill[ed] with swarm.’ Yet in the end, miraculously -- by their sheer courageous existence—these fierce poems soothe as much as they sting.”  - Dan Albergotti, author of Millennial Teeth

Blood Work reveals what happens to the self when the body is compromised by illness. These poems explore the struggle to remain whole in the shadow of Crohn’s disease and to make a home for oneself in the body and in the world.  "The deceptive directness of Siegel’s debut is remarkable; in his capable hands, illness reveals how barely contained any human being is, and how we reach, alone and together, for whatever will hold us." -- Mark Doty, author of Sweet Machine