Rasmussen Wins Holmes National Poetry Prize

Gustavus Adolphus College alumnus and Visiting Professor of English Matt Rasmussen ’98 has been selected as the latest recipient of the Theodore H. Holmes and Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize. The distinction is awarded by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University.

The Holmes National Poetry Prize was established in memory of Princeton alumnus Theodore H. Holmes and is presented each year to a poet of special merit as selected by the faculty of the University’s creative writing program. The award currently carries a prize of $5,000.

Rasmussen earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Gustavus and a master’s degree of fine arts from Emerson College. He is the author of Black Aperture, which won the 2013 Walt Whitman Award, the 2014 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, and was a National Book Award finalist. His poems have been published in The Literary Review, Gulf Coast, Water ̴ Stone Review, Paper Darts, Poets.org, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of grants and residencies from the McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, The Anderson Center, The Loft Literary Center, and The Corporation of Yaddo. He received a 2014 Pushcart Prize and is a founder and editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC.

More information about Rasmussen and his poetry can be found online at mattrasmussen.net.