Four Quartets Prize

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The Four Quartets Prize is an award of the Poetry Society of America, presented annually since 2018 in partnership with the T.S. Eliot Foundation. It is "first and foremost a celebration of the multi-part poem, which includes entire volumes composed of a unified sequence as well as novels in verse and book-length verse narratives." [1]

Contents

Background

The awards are named for T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, written over a four-year period. The award recognizes the 75th anniversary of Eliot's New York publisher first collecting them in a single volume in 1943. [2] [3]

Eligibility

The prize is awarded for a unified and complete sequence of poems. [4] Examples of existing sequences that would fit the category: [1]

Winners receive a prize of $20,000; three finalists (including the eventual winner) receive $1,000 apiece. [5] The prize does not require that nominees have an existing body of work or reach a certain age. [2]

The Four Quartets Prize was first presented in 2018 to Danez Smith for their sonnet "summer, somewhere."

Four Quartets winners and finalists

Winners are listed first, highlighted and with a double dagger.

YearPoetWork
2019 Dante Micheaux The Circus
Catherine Barnett "Accursed Questions" from Human Hours
Meredith Strickeranemochore
2018 [2] Danez Smith "summer, somewhere" from Don't Call Us Dead
Geoffrey G. O'Brien "Experience in Groups" from Experience in Groups
Kathleen Peirce Vault: a poem

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References

  1. 1 2 "Four Quartets Prize - Poetry Society of America". www.poetrysociety.org. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  2. 1 2 3 Harriet Staff (Apr 16, 2018). "Danez Smith Wins Inaugural Four Quartets Prize". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  3. Kirk, Russell (2008). Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century. ISI Books. p. 239. OCLC   80106144.
  4. "Minneapolis poet Danez Smith wins Four Quartets Prize". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  5. "Inaugural Four Quartets Prize Finalists Announced - Poetry Society of America". www.poetrysociety.org. Retrieved 2018-09-20.