Brooklynite to share book of elegies in Cobble Hill

Brooklyn BookBeat

March 11, 2015 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Patrick Phillips, a Brooklyn-based poet, will speak about his new collection, “Elegy for a Broken Machine,” at Cobble Hill’s BookCourt on March 20. Photo by Marion Ettlinger

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Brooklyn-based poet Patrick Phillips’ new collection “Elegy for a Broken Machine” consists of odes to the greatest loves and losses in our lives right alongside odes to the seemingly insignificant — cigarettes, a mattress, a mirror, our hair and more.

Phillips will make an appearance on March 20 at BookCourt in Cobble Hill to share his new work.

Writes Phillips: “I thought/ even the silence,/ if you listened,/ meant something.” In “Elegy for a Broken Machine,” Phillips has collected those silences and given them meaning, connecting them to his forefathers, his children and the future generations he has yet to meet.

Phillips is the author of two poetry collections, “Boy” and “Chattahoochee,” which won the 2005 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His honors include both Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Discovery/The Nation Prize from the 92nd Street Y, and the Translation Prize of the American-Scandinavian Foundation. He teaches at Drew University. Born in Atlanta, Phillips currently lives in Brooklyn.