The Lame God

Winner of 2013 May Swenson Poetry Award
In The Lame God, author M. B. McLatchey reminds us of the inevitable bond between art and empathy. With a controlled language that finds its echo chamber in the immortal themes and characters of classical literature, this courageous work accompanies the author on her journey through a parent’s anguish in the face of a horrific crime. Using the art of poetry she gives voice to a suffering—and a love—that might otherwise go unheard.

The May Swenson Poetry Award, an annual competition named for May Swenson, honors her as one of America's most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was loved and praised by writers from virtually every school of American poetry. She left a legacy of fifty years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in Logan, Utah, her hometown.

M. B. McLatchey holds degrees in comparative literature and languages, in teaching, and in English literature from Harvard University, Brown University, and Williams College, as well as the MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. A widely published poet and scholar with an extensive background in literature, philosophy, and ancient and modern languages. She has received numerous awards including the Harvard University Danforth Prize, the Harvard/Radcliffe Prize for Literary Scholarship, and the Brown University Elmer Smith Award for Teaching. Her most recent poetry awards include the American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal, the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry, the Spoon River Poetry Review’s Editors’ Prize, the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, and the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award. She has also authored and edited a compilation of Greek and Roman readings titled Primary Sources. With over twenty years of experience teaching humanities and literature to college students, she is currently a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Visit her at www.corvidwriters.org/mbm.