D.A. Powell wins $100,000 prize for poetry

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D.A. Powell, who teaches at the University of San Francisco, has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award from Claremont Graduate University. His books include ‘Tea,’ ‘Lunch,’ ‘Cocktails’ and ‘Chronic.’

In a review in The Times last year, John Freeman described Powell as ‘a modern romantic: obsessed, enraged and turned about by love. His language is infiltrated by songs, phrases from movies, the treacle-sweet soundtracks of so many musicals. ‘Love,’ he writes in one poem, ‘is the chorus waiting to be born.’ ‘

The Tufts prize was established in 1992 to honor work by a midcareer poet. Powell is 46.

Claremont also announced Tuesday that the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award was going to Beth Bachmann for her first book of poetry, ‘Temper.’ Bachmann teaches at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The awards will be presented at 6:30 p.m. April 22 at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. The free event is open to the public, although an RSVP is required at (909) 621-8974.

-- Lee Margulies