Ninth Title in Wheelbarrow Books Series Released

February 14, 2022

MSU Press and the RCAH Center for Poetry are pleased to announce the release of Late Self-Portraits by Mary Morris, winner of the 2020 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize (Established).

A compelling collection of poems, Late Self-Portraits conveys an intimate description of lives through a collage of portraits and affliction. Weaving history and the sacred, both intimate and worldly, one encounters a blind Jorge Luis Borges with his mother, a glass confessional in the Notre Dame Cathedral, Frida Kahlo in Mexico, ghosts, a neurosurgeon’s prognosis, and Marie Laveau in New Orleans. Whether in a field with Joan of Arc, encountering the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, or having dinner with Hades, these are haunting poems of loss and unearthing, equally bold, personal, and tender.

Mary Morris is the author of two previous books of poetry, Enter Water, Swimmer and Dear October, and is a recipient of the Rita Dove Award (2008), Western Humanities Review’s Mountain West Writers’ Prize (2019), the New Mexico Discovery Award (2005), and the National Federation of Press Women’s National Communications Contest Award (2021), and is a finalist for the 2021 International Book Awards.

Late Self-Portraits is the ninth title in the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Series, an imprint of the RCAH Center for Poetry with distribution by MSU Press.