2011 goes to Thom Donovan's THE HOLE, and to Samantha Giles's HURDIS ADDO

2011 was an impossible year for keeping up with the amazing poetry being published. To those studying the dead "masters," oh how will you ever catch up to the present?

To make it a tie this year is to say I'm cheating. That's fine! It's essential that the poems I select for this sexiest poem award be sexy, truly sexy in that they are beautifully written and confront the injustices of the world. Political poetry, some call it.

The conversations poets Thom Donovan and Samantha Giles have outside of their books manifest between the covers. BOOK COVERS I mean. A commune, an intentional digging site, an apparition of community they insist in their own ways into being.

These two books have quite seriously changed my life. Two books I will read over and over for the rest of my life.

These two books come at a time when the world truly is waking to the shame, to the courage, to the occupy.

THESE TWO BOOKS are required reading, and I assign them to my imaginary classroom. From the very real murders in Oakland, California in Samantha Giles's HURDIS ADDO, to the "Skin so thin with armor" of Thom Donovan's THE HOLE!

The Sexiest Poem Award is for finely crafted poems confronting injustice. When you read these books I hope you will drop me a line as I would love to talk with you about them. You can reach me at CAConrad13@aol.com