Michael Bazzett wins 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry

Minnesota poet Michael Bazzett has won a $10,000 cash prize and a publishing contract with Milkweed Editions for his manuscript "You Must Remember This."

Bazzett, who teaches poetry at Blake School, crafted the collection of poems upon his return from a sabbatical in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

A graduate of Carleton College, Bazzett grew up in Rochester and says, "It had never fully occurred to me that people growing up in the cornfields of southern Minnesota could end up as poets.”

Bazzett was selected from more than 150 submissions from poets across the Upper Midwest.

Prize judge Kevin Prufer described the manuscript as "frightening, hilarious and dark."

"You Must Remember This" will be published in November.

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