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Local author and Rice resident Chapman Hood Frazier won three first-place awards in this year’s 2024 Poetry Society of Virginia’s annual competition.  Two of the poems will appear in his most recently completed though currently unpublished collection, Appalachian Sutra.  The third poem, Goldfinch on Thistle is a key poem in a collaborative collection of poetry and wood engravings titled A Prophecy of Birds and is still in production.

His poem, Ordinary Road placed first for the Edgar Allan Poe Award.  It is a long poem based on stories he had heard from his father-in-law whose farm was located on Jennings Ordinary Road in Nottoway County.  Frazier’s second poem, Oral Lake, received a first-place award in the Brodie Herndon Memorial Award category.  This poem captures two poignant moments in the lives of a mother and son.  His third poem, Goldfinch on Thistle, is based on a wood engraving by the artist and Longwood Professor Emeritus, Christopher Register.

Rice resident heads to awards ceremony

Frazier has been invited to read these poems at the Poetry Society of Virginia’s upcoming Awards Ceremony on June 1 at the Richmond Public Library at 1PM.  He also is scheduled to read from his recent collection, The Lost Books of the Bestiary, at the McIntyre Bookstore in Fearrington Village just outside of Chapel Hill on May 25 and, this year, was invited to judge the North Carolina’s Poetry Society Competition this year.  Last year, he was an invited writer to read from his collection at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville.

Dr. Frazier is currently a James Madison University Professor Emeritus and is finishing his tenure as Professor in Residence for JMU in Prince Edward County Schools.  He will be replaced this fall by Dr. Scott Lunsford and will be devoting himself to more writing, family time, and co-managing Bellfield Farm, LLC.