This Tucson poet won an award for her look at immigration | Entertainment

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Susan Briante recently won the 2021 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation for Defacing the Monument, which deals with immigration along the US-Mexico border.

Bill Finley

Bill Finley Special for the Arizona Daily Star

The literary awards season is well underway and Tucson has found the limelight again.

Professor Susan Briante of the University of Arizona received the 2021 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation over a red carpet similar to the one that Tucsonians Lydia Millet and Lissie Jaquette, both finalists in last year’s National Book Awards, traveled.

Briante was honored for “Defacing the Monument,” a remarkably unique look at the human drama that unfolds every day along America’s southern border … and how the words of previous poets addressing other dark moments in US history are still in and echo around Nogales.

The Pegasus is one of the Poetry Foundation’s premier annual awards, honoring the best book on poetic criticism published in the United States the previous year.

“Monument” is Briante’s fourth book, three collections of her own works and this a collection of selected excerpts from other poets, which are connected and re-illuminated through Briante’s personal essays.

She probably would have published more poetry by now, but she spends too much time on … poetry. If she doesn’t write it, she teaches it. Then there is the following: She is married to a poet, Farid Matuk.

“I think poetry has had a special place in my heart since I was in school,” said Briante. “At one point I wrote a poem without really thinking about it, and my friend loved it so much she carried it around in her wallet. That impressed me so much. I loved writing fiction. I worked for a newspaper for a while, but I kept hearing the poet in me. “

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