2010 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry

Lucia Perillo, winner of the 2010 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, reads from her book "Inseminating the Elephant," at the awards ceremony. The 2010 prize, the 11th to be given, is awarded for the most distinguished book of poetry published in the preceding two years, 2008 and 2009. "Inseminating the Elephant" was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. Speaker Biography: Lucia Perillo's poetry has been described as vibrant, lyric and full of interesting paradoxes: elegant adjectives paired with visceral images, and violence tempered by the possibilities of human compassion and language. The New Yorker magazine said the poems in "Inseminating the Elephant" were "tough and witty" and the topics in the book ranged from "Viagra and video games to Transcendentalism." The book was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.