Susan Elbe

The Map of What Happened - The Backwaters Prize in Poetry Susan Elbe

I want a book of poems to act like a genuine book and not just a miscellany of the poet's most recent work willy-nillied between covers. Susan Elbe's The Map of What Happened is just such a thoughtful, integrated collection, lovingly (and, I'm betting, painstakingly) assembled, occupying a space/time continuum all its own from beginning to end. This book is so much more than a sum of its estimable parts; there is such palpable life here because there are so many human lives in its pages. And this poet has a real stake in showing us the various ways in which they honestly matter. By the sheer power of her down-to-earth empathy and the resilience of her language, she makes her people our people, too.  --David Clewell, from the Judge's statement