Associate Professor of English James Najarian was chosen as the winner of the sixth annual Frost Farm Prize for poetry. He was honored for his blank verse poem “The Dark Ages.” Najarian’s poem is an extended metaphor comparing a mother’s decline due to Alzheimer’s to the aftermath of the Roman departure from Britain. Poetry contest judge David J. Rothman, director of Western State Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing, called “The Dark Ages” a “compelling, masterful work, not only technically adroit but also thematically fierce and focused, and emotionally profound: an intense yet also measured depiction of destruction and grief.” Najarian’s poetry has been published in West Branch, Christianity and Literature, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Literary Imagination, and other journals. Najarian has previously won the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers’ Stephen J. Meringoff Writing Award in Poetry. Najarian will read his poetry at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH on June 17 to kick off the Frost Farm Poetry Conference.