So We Have Been Given Time Or

Author tour: San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York, Providence, Boston, New York. National advertising: American Poetry Review, Rain Taxi, Boston Review, Poetry Flash

Ann Lauterbach's experimental and compelling choice for the 2003 Verse Prize merges dramatic forms and poetry with dazzling results.Nakayasu's book-length poem uses its tumbling dramatic form to create a new inquiry into "character," "time," "place," "direction " and other elements. Lyrical language and personal, engaging voices take the reader on a dizzying and affecting journey through a "geography of risk." This wholly original work brings poetry into regions hitherto explored only by the most experimental forms of music and plastic arts. Sawako Nakayasu was born in Yokohama, Japan, and has lived in the US since the age of six. Her previous pubications include Clutch (Tinfish, 2002), Balconic (Duration, 2003), and Nothing fictional but accuracy or arrangement (she (Faux, 2003), and she edits the press Factorial. In 2003 she received the US-Japan Creative Artists' Program Fellowship from the NEA.