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

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

Photo of D.A. Powell: Trane DeVore