The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation, which also publishes Poetry magazine. The prize was established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly. It honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition"; its value is $100,000 [1] [2] making it one of the richest literary prizes in the world. The prize has been called "among the most prestigious awards that can be won by an American poet". [3]
The following list is based on the listing by the Poetry Foundation. [4] [5]
1986: Adrienne Rich
1987: Philip Levine
1988: Anthony Hecht
1989: Mona Van Duyn
1990: Hayden Carruth
1991: David Wagoner
1992: John Ashbery
1993: Charles Wright
1994: Donald Hall
1995: A. R. Ammons
1996: Gerald Stern
1997: William Matthews
1998: W. S. Merwin
1999: Maxine Kumin
2000: Carl Dennis
2001: Yusef Komunyakaa
2002: Lisel Mueller
2003: Linda Pastan
2004: Kay Ryan
2005: C. K. Williams
2006: Richard Wilbur
2007: Lucille Clifton
2008: Gary Snyder
2009: Fanny Howe
2010: Eleanor Ross Taylor
2011: David Ferry [6]
2012: W. S. Di Piero [7]
2013: Marie Ponsot [8]
2014: Nathaniel Mackey [9]
2015: Alice Notley [10]
2016: Ed Roberson
2017: Joy Harjo
2018: Martín Espada [11]
2019: Marilyn Nelson
2020: Marilyn Chin [12]
2021: Patricia Smith
2022: Sandra Cisneros, CAConrad, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Juan Felipe Herrera, Angela Jackson, Haki R. Madhubuti, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, Patti Smith and Arthur Sze [13]
2023: Kimiko Hahn [14]
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published during the preceding calendar year.
Alice Notley is an American poet. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetry—although she has always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific movement in general. Notley's early work laid both formal and theoretical groundwork for several generations of poets; she is considered a pioneering voice on topics like motherhood and domestic life.
Martín Espada is a Puerto Rican-American poet, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.
Robert Polito is a poet, biographer, essayist, critic, educator, curator, and arts administrator. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography in 1995 for Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson. The founding director of the New School Graduate Writing Program in New York City, he was President of the Poetry Foundation from 2013–2015, before returning to the New School as a professor of writing.
Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teaching a poetry workshop at Duke University.
The Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, was established by the will of Mary P. Sears, and named after the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The prize is given to a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need, and is currently worth (2014) between $6,000 and $9,000. The selection is made by a jury of three poets: one each appointed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Berkeley, and the third by the Board of Governors of the Society.
Marie Ponsot was an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. Her awards and honors included the National Book Critics Circle Award, Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, the Robert Frost Poetry Award, the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.
The Poetry Foundation is a United States literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly.
Marilyn Chin (陈美玲) is a prominent Chinese American poet, writer, activist, and feminist, as well as an editor and Professor of English. She is well-represented in major canonical anthologies and textbooks and her work is taught all over the world. Marilyn Chin's work is a frequent subject of academic research and literary criticism. Marilyn Chin has read her poetry at the Library of Congress.
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. From 1978 to 1994, she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. She is the author or translator of more than twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, entitled How I Discovered Poetry.
William Simone Di Piero is an American poet, translator, essayist, and educator. He has published ten collections of poetry and five collections of essays in addition to his translations. In 2012 Di Piero received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievement; in making the award, Christian Wiman noted, "He’s a great poet whose work is just beginning to get the wide audience it deserves."
Angela Jackson is an American poet, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jackson has been a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a community that fosters the intellectual development of Black creators, since 1970. She has held teaching positions at Kennedy-King College, Columbia College Chicago, Framingham State University, and Howard University. Jackson has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and became the fifth Illinois Poet Laureate in 2020.
Smartish Pace is a non-profit, independent literary journal based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The magazine was founded in 1999 by Stephen Reichert who was a University of Maryland School of Law student at the time. The name, Smartish Pace, originates from a tort case in which a horse carriage, which was travelling at "a smartish pace," ran over and killed a donkey. Smartish Pace has published poems by the following Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award winners: Carl Phillips, Martín Espada, Terrance Hayes, Rae Armantrout, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Schultz, Claudia Emerson, Nathaniel Mackey, Ted Kooser, Paul Muldoon, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Dennis, Stephen Dunn, Mary Oliver, Andrew Hudgins, Henry Taylor, Gerald Stern, Maxine Kumin, and Anthony Hecht. The magazine has also debuted previously unpublished letters of Elizabeth Bishop and award-winning new translations of Tomas Tranströmer. When referencing places Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson had published, Newsweek called the journal "obscure". As of Clifford Garstang's 2023 Literary Magazine Rankings, Smartish Pace was ranked one of the top ten poetry magazines in North America.
Douglas Kearney is an American poet, performer and librettist. Kearney grew up in Altadena, California. His work has appeared in Nocturnes, Jubilat, Beloit Poetry Journal, Gulf Coast, Poetry, Pleiades, Iowa Review, Callaloo, Boston Review, Hyperallergic, Scapegoat, Obsidian, Boundary 2, Jacket2, Lana Turner, Brooklyn Rail, and Indiana Review.In 2012, his and Anne LeBaron's opera, Crescent City, premiered and received widespread praise. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota.
Maria Saskia Hamilton was an American poet, editor, and professor and university administrator at Barnard College. She published five collections of poetry, the final of which, All Souls, was posthumously published in September 2023. Her academic focus was largely on the American poet Robert Lowell; she edited several collections of the writings and personal correspondence of Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Elizabeth Bishop. Additionally, she served as the director of literary programs at the Lannan Foundation, as the Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Curriculum at Barnard College, and as an editor at The Paris Review and Literary Imagination.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Roger William Reeves is an American poet and essayist.
Marsh Hawk Press, is a self-sustaining American independent, non-profit, literary press run by publisher Sandy McIntosh in East Rockaway, New York.
Major poetry related events which took place worldwide during 2019 are outlined below under different sections. This includes poetry books released during the year in different languages, major literary awards, poetry festivals and events, besides anniversaries and deaths of renowned poets etc. Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.