The National Book Critics Circle announced the selection of Ariana Benson’s debut poetry collection Black Pastoral as a finalist for the John Leonard Prize on Thursday, January 25, 2024. Black Pastoral is one of five titles nominated for the award for best first book in any genre, named for the longtime literary critic.
Recipient of the 2022 Furious Flower Poetry Prize, Benson serves as a nonfiction editor of Auburn Avenue Literary Journal. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Willie Perdomo selected Benson’s collection as the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, writing “If poetry is a form of prayer, then Black Pastoral is church, pew, pastor, baptismal site, hymn, and a symphonic archive of our historical silences.”
Black Pastoral explores the complex duality of Black peoples’ past and present relationship with nature. It surveys the ways in which our histories (both Black histories and natural/ecological histories), our suffering and our thriving, are forever wound around one another. They are painful at times and act as a salve at others. Ariana Benson’s poems meditate upon the violence and tenderness that simultaneously characterize the entangling of the two, taking the form of a series of ecopoetic musings that re-envision these confluences.
“The University of Georgia Press has long been honored to partner with Cave Canem in publishing first books from emerging Black poets.” said Press Director Lisa Bayer. “This recognition for Ariana Benson’s fearless debut confirms our trust in the role of poetry in mediating the world through the word.”
Winners will be announced on March 21, 2024, during the National Book Critics Circle Awards.
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