This Great Turtle Heart

This is the winner of the 2017 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize awarded by the Poetry society of Texas. Carol Coffee-Reposa, Poet Laureate of Texas 2018, said this about the Book. "In This Great Turtle Heart, Charlotte Renk fuses scholarship and artistry. The scientist's precision and the poets rapture, as she charts the arduous odyssey of a larger-than-life box turtle. Drawing on biology, myth, folklore, history and literature, Renk examines meticulously every facet of her subject's journey to capture both "the beauty and the burden of earth," its "dust-covered deserts" as well as the "Golden gasps of light," creating in the process a vision that enfolds and ultimately transforms the reader. These truly are poems for our time