Chuck Brickley — Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2025

Chuck Brickely  is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2025 for the volume, downhill home. (Ormskirk, UK: Shapshot Press, 2025).

Commentary from the Panel:

Chuck Brickley’s long-awaited new collection downhill home (Snapshot Press) stood out to the panel immediately. Varied in technique and subject matter yet maintaining a distinctive voice throughout, this full-length work demonstrates that the medium of one-breath poetry is still rich with creative possibilities.

Throughout the book, Brickley effectively matches structure and subject matter:

   half our state away

and yet the wipers swish

      ash                   es

      ash                   es

dawn     a needle in the last hopscotch square

Old Glory

waving like there’s no

Without being heavy-handed, Brickley includes poems with a poignant social consciousness:

alley frost

except

where he slept

city tents

a pitbull wags

what’s left

pausing

at the railing where he jumped

sunlight on the  bay

He also finds a way to give a strong sense of time and place to even the quiet pieces:

sunken hardhat

a few minnows resting

from the current

a fogbow

           at the end

         my hometown

just one more cartwheel the Milky Way

The nostalgia at the heart of this collection is conveyed with skill delicate and potent enough to leave readers reminiscing about things they never directly experienced. downhill home is a remarkable achievement and deeply worthy of this Touchstone Award!

Bruce H. Feingold

Distinguished Books Coordinator

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See the complete list of winners of both Individual Poem Awards and Distinguished Books Awards in the Touchstone Archives.