Retired Kent State Ashtabula professor wins poetry award

Sep. 16—ASHTABULA — Roger Craik, emeritus professor of English at Kent State University at Ashtabula, has taken second place in the 2024 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.

Winning the competition includes a cash prize and publication in the Nimrod International Journal. Craik's poems, "John Ruskin and a Nursing Home," "'Memory of a Free Festival' By David Bowie," "Founder's Day," "The Mistress at the Funeral," "Telling George, Charlotte, and Louis," "The Very Worst," "Revenant," "Grandmaster," "Roseangle," and "Dear Maxine," will appear in print later this year.

"This is one of the most prestigious poetry competitions in the world," Craik said. "I'm thrilled."

The final judge for this year's prize was American poet Paisley Rekdal, an award-winning writer and professor at the University of Utah, and Utah's poet laureate.

Craik has written five full-length books of poetry — all translated into Romania, Bulgarian, Danish and Belorussian.

He's spending his retirement traveling, writing poetry and fulfilling speaking engagements.

English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, Craik has worked as a journalist, TV critic and chess columnist. Before coming to the U.S. in 1991, he worked in Turkish universities and was awarded a Beineke Fellowship to Yale in 1990.