2014 Prizes for Contributors to Poetry Announced
Eight prizes awarded to poets, critics and essayists featured in the magazine over the past year
CHICAGO – Poetry magazine awards eight annual prizes for the best work published in Poetry during the past 12 months. Thomas Sayers Ellis, Claudia Rankine, Franny Choi, Jamaal May, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, francine j. harris, Tom Sleigh and Frances Richard will receive the 2014 prizes for their poems, translations and prose in Poetry.
“Every year, Poetry recognizes the work of its contributors with a series of awards, some dating back to our earliest history and some of recent vintage,” says Poetry magazine editor Don Share. “Garlanding poets, critics and translators, the list of prizewinners has grown strikingly more impressive and more diverse over time, like contemporary poetry itself.”
THE LEVINSON PRIZE, presented annually since 1914 through the generosity of the late Salmon O. Levinson and his family, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Thomas Sayers Ellis for his poem “Vernacular Owl” in the July/August 2014 issue. The oldest of the magazine’s prizes still awarded today, the Levinson Prize has been awarded to such great poets as Wallace Stevens (1920), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1931), H.D. (1938), E.E. Cummings (1939), Dylan Thomas (1945), Muriel Rukeyser (1947), John Berryman (1950), William Carlos Williams (1954), Anne Sexton (1962), John Ashbery (1977), Yusef Komunyakaa (1997) and Rita Dove (1998).
THE BESS HOKIN PRIZE, established in 1948 through the generosity of Poetry’s late friend and guarantor Mrs. David Hokin, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Claudia Rankine for her piece in the March 2014 issue, an excerpt from Citizen, her forthcoming book. Past winners of the Bess Hokin Prize include Ruth Stone (1953), Sylvia Plath (1957), W.S. Merwin (1962), Adrienne Rich (1963), Margaret Atwood (1974) and Paul Muldoon (1996).
THE FREDERICK BOCK PRIZE, founded in 1981 by friends in memory of the former associate editor of Poetry, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Franny Choi for her poems “Second Mouth” and “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street” in the March 2014 issue. Past winners of the Frederick Bock Prize include Billy Collins (1992), Jane Kenyon (1993) and Rae Armantrout (2008).
THE J. HOWARD AND BARBARA M.J. WOOD PRIZE, endowed since 1994, in the amount of $5,000, is awarded to Jamaal May for his poems “There Are Birds Here” and “Per Fumum” in the February 2014 issue. Past winners of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize include W.S. Merwin (1995) and Franz Wright (2011).
THE JOHN FREDERICK NIMS MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR TRANSLATION, established in 1999 by Bonnie Larkin Nims, trustees of the Poetry Foundation, and friends of the late poet, translator and editor, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Kareem James Abu-Zeid for his translations of Dunya Mikhail’s poem “Tablets” in the March 2014 issue and of Najwan Darwish’s poems “Mary,” “Want Ad” and “A Moment of Silence” in the April 2014 issue.
THE FRIENDS OF LITERATURE PRIZE, established in 2002 by the Friends of Literature, in the amount of $500, is awarded to francine j. harris for her poem “enough food and a mom” in the September 2014 issue.
THE EDITORS PRIZE FOR FEATURE ARTICLE, established in 2005, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Tom Sleigh for his essay “To Be Incarnational” in the February 2014 issue.
THE EDITORS PRIZE FOR REVIEWING, established in 2004, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Frances Richard for her review of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics in the May 2014 issue.
The prizes are organized and administered by the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, publisher of Poetry magazine. Browse all past issues of Poetry magazine since 1912.
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About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs. For more information, please visit poetryfoundation.org.
About Poetry Magazine
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg and other now-classic authors. In succeeding decades it has presented—often for the first time—works by virtually every major contemporary poet.
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