"I Hear Always the Dogs on the Hospital Roof" by David Fisher is the winner of the first William Meredith Award for Poetry 2012. This exciting book features new and collected poems from David fisher, plus 35 wonderful full color paintings by Rita Dawley and photographs by Stella Monday, plus many other illustrations. Grace Cavalieri writes in her introduction: "It's a sharp world you'll enter now with David Fisher's poetry. You'll read of Carthage, Tiberius, The Roman conquest. Then, you'll feel the suffering we impose on ourselves, first imposed on us by others, in the splendid poems from "The Book of Madness" (1980)... This is a book for which all the readings, meditations, and teachings have not prepared us. It is from a man who has lost everything early on, including his mind, and, now, he reclaims the search for those things sought and never found-through narrative, epic, dramatic, classic, multilingual, historical, lyrical poetry. The book is eclectic because that's the way his mind works; but judged by what risks it took to write and publish, there are many others who comprehend and are addicted to this poet's ironic beauty."