i built a boat with all the towels in your closet, by Leia Penina Wilson

i built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown), winner of the 2012 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize.

Judge:  Evie Shockley

Leia Penina Wilson’s i built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown) is at once a love ballad and a warning. These poems are—at their simplest—about relationships, sex, love, creatures, different kinds (and degrees) of violence, and—at their most complex—about the limits of the imagination, of language, and about the power the imagination has over the body. These poems confront the shifty line between human and animal, and urge the question: at what cost the body. Wilson’s animal-human doesn’t intend to answer that question; instead, she lunges towards it and tears it up and begins again, and again, and again. Read more about Leia Penina Wilson and the To the Lighthouse Book Prize.

I was mesmerized by the wild lyricism, quiet wit, and fearless curiosity of these poems. I feel lucky to have encountered them and am delighted to recognize them with the To the Lighthouse Prize.
­—Evie Shockley