{"id":164,"date":"2017-04-05T11:43:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/?p=164"},"modified":"2022-12-05T11:45:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T17:45:42","slug":"salazar-selected-for-national-poetry-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/news\/salazar-selected-for-national-poetry-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Salazar selected for national poetry prize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

COLUMBUS, Miss. \u2013 Charles (C.T.) Salazar is honored to have his poem recognized as one of the eight best in the Association of Writers & Writing Programs\u2019 Intro Journal Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"C.T.<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel incredibly lucky. I know competitions like this pull in way more than eight `prize worthy\u2019 poems, and the judges have to decide from a stack of genuinely phenomenal writing,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know that I personally would pick mine after reading the submissions. I can\u2019t wait to read other winners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Intro Journals Project is a literary competition that showcases new work by students enrolled in AWP member programs. Program directors are invited to nominate students\u2019 works, which are selected for publication in participating literary journals with national circulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Columbus native, Salazar is in his second year of Mississippi University for Women\u2019s low residency master\u2019s of fine arts in creative writing program. His poem, \u201cLover the Lord Has Left Us,\u201d will be published by Tampa Review later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salazar described his poem about a ship that hits a baby whale and how different members of the crew react to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of the setting and feeling of the poem comes from my own time in Maine. I was lucky enough to spend a few nights on a sailboat a while back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are different characters, and they all respond to the tragedy in a different way, much like a person arguing with himself. The crew collectively name the whale Samson, after their ship\u2019s name, Delilah. The title is inspired from a verse out of the King James,\u201d he explained, referring to Judges 16:20. \u201cThe verse is about Samson charging the battlefield and sure of himself to be victorious. The verse ends: `but he did not realize the Lord had left him.\u2019 Other than that one allusion, it\u2019s not really a religious poem at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Kendall Dunkelberg, director of creative writing at The W, said, \u201cWe are very proud of C. T. for this national recognition. He is a serious poet, and clearly his poems compare favorably to those from the top creative writing programs in the country. We look forward to great things from C. T. This is not his first publication, and certainly won\u2019t be his last.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salazar said he was drawn to The W\u2019s creative writing program because of its personalized feel. \u201cThere are not a lot of people here compared to other universities. I\u2019m surrounded by incredible artists and thinkers and doers. Photographers, painters, digital artists, poets, fiction writers, historicists, future nurses and future school teachers. Really it\u2019s overwhelming how fantastic everyone is and will be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, there are 25 students enrolled in the program, which started in August 2015. Salazar said he was impressed with the professors in the program. \u201cThey are great writers. What it\u2019s like to read their books and know they\u2019re grading my writing is both spectacular and challenging. I\u2019m growing past where I thought I would stop growing\u2026The time they put into me tells me they have faith in me, and truly believe in me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salazar, who is also known locally for organizing regular poetry nights in Columbus and Starkville, also credited his classmates for his recent honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo many of my classmates had a hand in helping me shape this poem, and they\u2019re all so talented and dedicated,\u201d he said. \u201cIt used to be that Walt Whitman or John Keats or John Steinbeck or Mary Shelley were my favorite writers, but now I\u2019m encountering knock-down brilliant writing from my classmates pretty much daily just by sharing this MFA with them. We\u2019re inspiring each other every day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COLUMBUS, Miss. \u2013 Charles (C.T.) Salazar is honored to have his poem recognized as one of the eight best in the Association of Writers & Writing Programs\u2019 Intro Journal Project. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.muw.edu\/mfacreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}