Poetry | Soft cover, printed offset | 96 pages | $18
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& Bird in Hand
2024 Henry Morgenthau Poetry Prize Winner
Winifred Hughes’s The Village of New Ghosts, winner of the 2024 Henry Morgenthau III First Book Poetry Prize for a poet 70 or older, is attuned to the destabilizing experience of loss. In the title poem, the poet describes herself as walking “in a sort of daze / astonished to discover the present and the past, seasons blurring into one long seasonless tunnel” as she feels herself “superimposed on someplace else.” Time, and the poet’s sense of it, has shifted, and she is newly awake. Grace Cavalieri, Morgenthau judge and former Maryland Poet Laureate, says, “I never wanted to stop reading.”
Praise for The Village of New Ghosts
“The task of ‘the poet’ is brilliantly fulfilled with sonics, structure, detail, richness and care. But where this book truly exceeds and excels is in creating a hologram of emotions, a reality we can enter, where aesthetics are crisp and clear enough to create a new paradigm. Poetics that bring emotional worlds into existence have to be held in place with mastery. Someone is obviously in charge of this work. Someone is in control of its precise syntax and beautiful heart. I never wanted to stop reading.”
Grace Cavalieri, Henry Morgenthau III Poetry Prize Judge & author of The Long Game
“In Hughes’ work we enter into a stunning linguistic and emotional landscape of give and take, of push and pull, each step forward a constant realignment of understanding of nature and history, of temporality itself. ‘How can I lose what has not been?’ Hughes writes. And ‘Will I simply step out of / chronology?’ The Village of New Ghosts moves brilliantly by way of questioning. There is a hesitation, a shifting back and forth between the known and the unknowable, what can be reached and that which one, despite all odds, continues moving towards. Everything ‘still so familiar, yet so estranged.’”
EJ Colen, author of What Weaponry and The Green Condition
“There is a moment in our life that we know deep within ourselves, yet we ask will it be ‘lost or more itself’ if we write it down? Only Winifred Hughes asks such questions in her breathtakingly expansive yet focused book. Stand by the water, ask ‘What does the water remember / as it slides in and out of itself’? She suggests an answer, not the answer, but one along with others that you will not be able to shake off.”
David Sten Herrstrom, author of Light as Experience and Imagination from Paleolithic to Roman Times
About the Author
Winifred (Winnie) Hughes is a reformed academic and active birder living in Princeton, NJ. Winnie comes from a “whole family of scribblers”: her mother Josephine Nicholls Hughes was a poet, her father Riley Hughes, a novelist, and her three siblings, all writers, including her sister Hildred Crill, a poet who lives in Stockholm. Currently she teaches nature writing and ecopoetry at the Watershed Institute in Pennington, NJ, and leads many bird walks in the local open spaces. She is author of two prize-wining chapbooks, Frost Flowers (2019) and Nine-Bend Bridge (2015). The Village of New Ghosts is her first full-length collection of poetry.
Winnie is a longtime member of U.S. 1 Poets Cooperative, established in the 70s, dedicated to fostering new poets. She was married to the late Fred Spar; their two grown sons are Adam and Alex Spar.
Events
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Past Events
Princeton Makes
4 pm Sunday, Dec. 8
Princeton Center for Modern Aging
4-5 pm Tuesday, Nov. 19
Princeton Research Forum
Sunday, Nov. 17
Lawrenceville Public Library
6:30-8 pm Thursday, Nov. 14
Watershed Institute
7-8:30 pm Tuesday, Nov. 12
The Henry Morgenthau lll First Book Poetry Prize for a poet 70 or older
The prize honors Henry Morgenthau III, author of A Sunday in Purgatory, his first collection of poems at age 99. After a distinguished career as a writer and producer for public television, Mr. Morgenthau began writing poetry in his nineties, pursuing it with great seriousness and passion. He gave readings and book signings, enthralling audiences of all ages with his intelligence and wit, and fielded correspondence from people inspired by his poems. His audience was changed by him and he in turn by them. As he said, “to finally, in my nineties, after such a long and public life, be able to write and publish poems – to connect with other people from my deepest, truest self – was a gift. To be open to others in this way . . . I don’t know why I waited so long.”
Reseller Ordering Information
Download a copy of the book’s press kit:
The Village of New Ghosts by Winifred Hughes
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Passager Books
ISBN 978-1-7355148-8-8
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.3 x 8 inches
$18
Bookstores: Order through Itasca Books at itascabooks.com. For consignment sales, order directly from Passager Books at christine@passagerbooks.com.
Questions: editors@passagerbooks.com