From factory floor to highest perches of poetry, Baltimore-born bard wins $100,000 prize

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This undated photo released by Claremont Graduate University shows Afaa Michael Weaver. Weaver, who spent two years in the army and 15 years in a factory, has won some life-changing money. Claremont Graduate University in Southern California announced Wednesday, March 12, 2014, that Weaver of Somerville, Mass., has won the 00,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his book of verse, “The Government of Nature.” (AP Photo/Claremont Graduate University, Catherine Laine)

CLAREMONT, Calif. – A former Baltimore factory worker has won some life-changing money. Not from the lottery, but for poetry.

Claremont Graduate University in Southern California announced Wednesday that 62-year-old Afaa (OFF’-uh) Michael Weaver of Somerville, Mass., has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his book of verse “The Government of Nature.”

The prize, one of the richest handed out for poetry in the U.S., goes annually to a mid-career poet.

The competition’s chief judge, Chase Twichell, called Weaver’s life story “remarkable.”

Born in Baltimore in 1951, Weaver served in the Army for two years and worked in a factory for 15 before reinventing himself as a poet in the 1980s.

The book, his 12th, describes his traumatic childhood.

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