By Erin Holaday Ziegler
University of Kentucky creative writing Professor Nikky Finney has won the 2011 National Book Award in Poetry for her recent work, “Head Off & Split.” Finney attended the award ceremony last night in New York City, where she accepted the highly prestigious honor.
“Head Off & Split” was published by Northwestern University Press in February of this year, and Finney has been touring with the book since late winter.
The National Book Award website says the poems in Finney's "Head Off & Split" "sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African-American life: from Civil Rights matriarch Rosa Parks, to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning, to a terrified