The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards

Last updated
The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards
CGU.Tufts logo.jpg
Location Claremont, California
CountryUnited States
Presented byClaremont Graduate University
First awarded1993/1994
Website The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards

The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the United States. [1]

Contents

The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award is a $100,000 prize presented to a mid-career, emerging poet who already possesses an established body of work. The Kingsley Tufts award is known to be one of the world's most lucrative poetry prizes.

Its counterpart, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, is given to a poet who demonstrates genuine promise in their first book of published poetry, with an attached purse of $10,000.

History

Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award

Young Kingsley Tufts KTufts-web1.png
Young Kingsley Tufts

Kingsley Tufts held executive positions in the Los Angeles shipyards and wrote poetry as his avocation. His poetry has been featured in The New Yorker , Esquire , and Harpers , among other publications.

Following his death in 1991, Kingsley's wife, Kate, sold her home and the majority of the couple's estate in order to fund an endowment to help poets further their craft. She established the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 1993 at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.

Initially, the award was for $50,000, and has subsequently doubled due to increases in the endowment. It is intended for an emerging poet who is past the very beginning but has not yet reached the acknowledged pinnacle of their career.

Kate Tufts had no prior affiliation with Claremont Graduate University, but when she met then-university President John Maguire and visited the campus, she became convinced that it was the perfect home for her poetry prize. [2]

Unlike many literary awards, which are coronations for a successful career or body of work, the Kingsley Tufts award was created to both honor the poet and provide the resources that allow artists to continue working.

Kate Tufts said she wanted to create a prize "that would enable a poet to work on his or her craft for a while without paying bills."

The Kate Tufts Discovery Award

Kate Tufts Kate Tufts.jpeg
Kate Tufts

In 1994, just a year after the inauguration of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Kate Tufts founded the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, which began in the amount of $5,000, but has since doubled to $10,000.

Kate Tufts died in June 1997, at the age of 86. While she did not live to see her awards grow to become some of the largest poetry prizes in the world, she certainly took pride in their inception while she was alive.

Doug Anderson, 1995 Kate Tufts Discovery Award recipient, remembers her sardonic wit when meeting her that year: "She came into the room at the Claremont Graduate School grumbling that she couldn't smoke in there, and then she stopped and looked at Tom Lux [that year's Kingsley Tufts award recipient] and myself. Kate Tufts looked at us and said, 'You don't know how glad I am that this year's awards were given to a couple of really disreputable poets.'" [2]

Judging

Both awards go through two phases of judging. A preliminary panel of three judges screens the approximately 400 combined applications that are received for both awards. They then pass on finalists to the final judges.

The final panel is composed of five distinguished judges, representing a cross-section of the American poetry community.

2020

The panel of final judges for the 2017 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards is:

Timothy Donnelly, chair; poet, associate professor at Columbia University, and previous editor of the Boston Review

Cathy Park Hong, poet, poetry editor at the New Republic, and professor at Rutgers University–Newark.

Meghan O’Rourke, poet, essayist, memoirist, and editor of the Yale Review.

Luis J. Rodriguez, poet, writer, and founding editor of Tia Chucha Press

Sandy Solomon, poet and teacher at Vanderbilt University

2019

The panel of final judges for the 2017 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards is:

Timothy Donnelly, chair; poet, associate professor at Columbia University, and previous editor of the Boston Review

Cathy Park Hong, poet, poetry editor at the New Republic, and professor at Rutgers University–Newark.

Khadijah Queen, poet, playwright, and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Luis J. Rodriguez, poet, writer, and founding editor of Tia Chucha Press

Sandy Solomon, poet and teacher at Vanderbilt University

2017

The panel of final judges for the 2017 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards [3] is:

Don Share, chair; poet and editor of Poetry magazine

Elena Karina Byrne, poet, poetry curator/moderator for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Terrance Hayes, 2000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award recipient, poet, and professor at the University of Pittsburgh

Meghan O'Rourke, poet, essayist, editor, and literary critic

Brian Kim Stefans, poet and professor of English at University of California, Los Angeles

2012

The panel of final judges for the 2012 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards [4] is:

Linda Gregerson, poet, professor at the University of Michigan, and past Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award recipient

David Barber, poet, poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly

Kate Gale, poet, novelist, managing editor of Red Hen Press

Ted Genoways, award-winning poet and Editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review

Carl Phillips, poet, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and past Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award recipient

The panel of preliminary judges for the 2012 competition includes:

Jericho Brown, poet, Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego

Andrew Feld, poet, editor of the Seattle Review, and assistant professor at the University of Washington

Jennifer Chang, poet, Assistant Professor of creative writing at Bowling Green State University

Distinguished past judges

Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner, and poetry editor of The New Yorker

Robert Pinsky, poet, past Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and poetry editor at Slate

Charles Harper Webb, Guggenheim Fellowship recipient in 2001, and professor at California State University Long Beach

Submission requirements/deadlines

Submissions are due annually on July 1, and eligible work has to have been published the previous year (between July and June). Manuscripts, CDs, and chapbooks are not accepted.

Awards ceremony

Award winners are announced in the February following the July deadline, with a ceremony and presentation of the awards in April, national poetry month. The ceremony takes place on the Claremont Graduate University Campus, and winners are required to accept their award in person.

Distinguished speakers at the Awards Ceremony have included Kathy Bates in 2002, [5] Leonard Nimoy in 2007, [6] and Maxine Hong Kingston in 2012.

Restrictions

A single work may be submitted for either award only once, although the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award may submit another work in a later year for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner, by accepting the award, agrees to spend one week in residence at Claremont Graduate University for lectures and poetry readings in Claremont and the greater Los Angeles area.

The poet must be an American citizen or legal resident alien of the United States. [7]

Winners

YearKingsley Tufts Poetry AwardKate Tufts Discovery Award
2020 Ariana Reines A Sand Book Tiana ClarkI Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
2019 Dawn Lundy MartinGood Stock Strange Blood Diana Khoi NguyenGhost Of
2018 Patricia Smith Incendiary Art Donika KellyBestiary
2017 Vievee FrancisForest Primeval Phillip B. WilliamsThief in the Interior
2016 Ross GayCatalog of Unabashed Gratitude Danez Smith[insert] boy
2015 Angie EstesEnchantée Brandon SomThe Tribute Horse
2014 Afaa Michael WeaverThe Government of Nature Yona HarveyHemming the Water
2013 Marianne BoruchThe Book of HoursHeidy Steidlmayer — Fowling Piece
2012 Timothy DonnellyThe Cloud Corporation Katherine LarsonRadial Symmetry
2011 Chase TwichellHorses Where the Answers Should Have Been Atsuro RileyRomey's Order
2010 D.A. PowellChronic Beth BachmannTemper
2009 Matthea HarveyModern Life Matthew DickmanAll-American Poem
2008 Tom SleighSpace Walk Janice N. HarringtonEven the Hollow My Body Made is Gone
2007 Rodney JonesSalvation Blues Eric McHenryPotscrubber Lullabies
2006 Lucia PerilloLuck Is Luck Christian HawkeyThe Book of Funnels
2005 Michael RyanNew and Selected Poems Patrick PhillipsChattahoochee
2004 Henri ColeMiddle Earth Adrian BlevinsThe Brass Girl Brouhaha
2003 Linda GregersonWaterborne Joanie MackowskiThe Zoo
2002 Carl PhillipsThe Tether Cate MarvinWorld's Tallest Disaster
2001 Alan ShapiroThe Dead Alive and Busy Jennifer ClarvoeInvisible Tender
2000 Robert WrigleyReign of Snakes Terrance HayesMuscular Music
1999 B.H. FairchildThe Art of the Lathe Barbara RasBite Every Sorrow
1998 John KoetheFalling Water Charles Harper WebbReading the Water
1997 Campbell McGrathSpring Comes to Chicago Lucia PerilloThe Body Mutinies
1996 Deborah DiggesRough Music Barbara HambyDelirium
1995 Thomas LuxSplit Horizon Doug AndersonThe Moon Reflected Fire
1994 Yusef KomunyakaaNeon Vernacular Catherine Bowman1-800-HOT-RIBS
1993 Susan MitchellRaptureNot Awarded

Related Research Articles

Claremont Graduate University Private graduate university in Claremont, California, United States

The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges which includes five undergraduate and two graduate institutions of higher education.

Patricia Smith (poet) American poet

Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.

Carl Phillips American writer and poet (born 1959)

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

Northwestern University Press

Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism, Chicago regional studies, African American intellectual history, theater and performance studies, and fiction. Parneshia Jones is director of the press. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Chase Twichell is an American poet, professor, publisher, and, in 1999, the founder of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is Things as It Is. Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is the winner of several awards in writing from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and The Artists Foundation. Additionally, she has received fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, Field, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, and The Yale Review.

B.H. Fairchild is an American poet and former college professor. His most recent book is The Blue Buick, and his poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Hudson Review, Salmagundi, The Sewanee Review. His third poetry collection, The Art of the Lathe, winner of the 1997 Beatrice Hawley Award, brought Fairchild's work to national prominence, garnering him a large number of awards and fellowships including the William Carlos Williams Award, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, California Book Award, Natalie Ornish Poetry Award, PEN Center USA West Poetry Award, National Book Award (finalist), Capricorn Poetry Award, and Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships. The book ultimately gave him international prominence, as The Waywiser Press in England published the U.K. edition of the book. The Los Angeles Times wrote that "The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild has become a contemporary classic—a passionate example of the plain style, so finely crafted and perfectly pitched...workhorse narratives suffused with tenderness and elegiac music."

Terrance Hayes American poet and educator

Terrance Hayes is an American poet and educator who has published seven poetry collections. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010. In September 2014, he was one of 21 recipients of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, awarded to individuals who show outstanding creativity in their work.

Deborah Digges was an American poet and teacher.

Four Way Books is an American nonprofit literary press located in New York City, New York, which publishes poetry and short fiction by emerging and established writers. It features the work of the winners of national poetry competitions, as well as collections accepted through general submission, panel selection, and solicitation by the editors. The press is run by director and founding editor Martha Rhodes, who is the author of five poetry collections. Four Way Books titles are distributed by University of Chicago Press. The press has received grants from New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses through their re-grant program.

Kathy Fagan Grandinetti is an American poet.

Katherine Larson is an American poet, molecular biologist and field ecologist. She is the 2010 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and her first collection of poetry, Radial Symmetry, was published by Yale University Press in 2011.

Shane McCrae is an American poet, and is currently Poetry Editor of Image.

Yona Harvey American poet (born 1974)

Yona Harvey is an American poet and assistant professor at University of Pittsburgh. She won the 2014 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is also an author of Marvel Comics' World of Wakanda, becoming one of the first two black women writing for Marvel.

Danez Smith American poet

Danez Smith is an African-American, poet, writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are queer, non-binary and HIV-positive. They are the author of the poetry collections [insert] Boy and Don't Call Us Dead: Poems, both of which have received multiple awards. Their most recent poetry collection Homie was published on January 21, 2020.

Vievee Francis American poet

Vievee Elaure Francis is an American poet. She is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan in 2009, and she received a Rona Jaffe Award the same year. She is the author of three collections of the poetry, the third of which, Forest Primeval, won the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry and the 2017 Kingsley Tufts poetry award.

Mai Der Vang American poet

Mai Der Vang is a Hmong American poet.

Tiana Clark American poet

Tiana Clark is an American poet. Clark is the author of Equilibrium and I Can't Talk About The Trees Without The Blood. Her work has been recognized with a Rattle Poetry Prize and a Pushcart Prize.

Francine J. Harris is an American poet. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Here Is the Sweet Hand, play dead (2016), and allegiance (2012). Harris was the winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Award. Harris's first collection, allegiance, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Her second collection, play dead, was the winner of the Lambda Literary and the Audre Lorde Awards, and was finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

Divya Victor Poet

Divya Victor is a Tamil American poet and professor, known for her poetry book Curb which won the PEN Open Book Award.

Shana Monica Ferrell is an American poet and fiction writer. In 2007 she was awarded the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for her debut book of poems, Beasts for the Chase. Her novel The Answer Is Always Yes was published by Random House in 2008. Her third book, a poetry collection entitled You Darling Thing, was published by Four Way Books in 2018 and was named a New & Noteworthy selection by The New York Times. It became a finalist for the Believer Book Award in Poetry and for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

References

  1. "About the Awards". Claremont Graduate University. Retrieved 2015-06-09.
  2. 1 2 "Tufts Poetry Awards 2008". Claremont Graduate University. Retrieved 2015-06-09.
  3. "The Tufts Poetry Awards Judges". Claremont Graduate University. Retrieved 2017-01-30.
  4. "The Tufts Poetry Awards Judges". Claremont Graduate University. Retrieved 2015-06-09.
  5. "Kathy Bates assists in honoring poets". University of La Verne. 2002-05-02. Retrieved 2015-06-09.
  6. "Awards". Beyond Spock: Leonard Nimoy Fan Page. Retrieved 2015-06-09.
  7. "Eligibility", Tufts Poetry Awards, Claremont Graduate University.