2017 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. Li-Young Lee, Roger Reeves, Zeina Hashem Beck, Layli Long Soldier, Jeffrey Angles, Tommy Pico, Carl Phillips and Vidyan Ravinthiran will receive the 2017 prizes for their poems, translations and prose in Poetry.
"Like contemporary poetry itself, the list of prizewinners has grown strikingly more impressive and diverse over time,” said Don Share, editor. “This series of annual awards is given to poets, critics and translators whose work exceeds the norm.”
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 Li-Young Lee for “Changing Places in the Fire” from the July/August 2017 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 Roger Reeves for his poem “Domestic Violence” published in the June 2017 issue. 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 Claudia Rankine (2014).
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 Zeina Hashem Beck for “Maqam” from the March 2017 issue. Past winners of the Frederick Bock Prize include Billy Collins (1992), Jane Kenyon (1993) and A.E. Stallings (2004).
THE J. HOWARD AND BARBARA M. J. WOOD PRIZE, endowed since 1994, in the amount of $5,000, is awarded to Layli Long Soldier for her selection from “Whereas” in the January 2017 issue. Past winners of the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize include Charles Wright (1996) 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 $1000, is awarded to Jeffrey Angles for his translations of Hirmo Ito’s poems “I Am Chito” and “Two Traveling Together” from the July/August 2017 issue. The 2017 Award amount was doubled from $500 to $1,000 due to the generosity of an anonymous donor.
THE FRIENDS OF LITERATURE PRIZE, established in 2002 by the Friends of Literature, in the amount of $500, is awarded to Tommy Pico for his selection from “Junk” in the January 2017 issue.
THE EDITORS PRIZE FOR FEATURE ARTICLE, established in 2005, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Carl Phillips for his essay “A Politics of Mere Being” in the December 2016 issue.
THE EDITORS PRIZE FOR REVIEWING, established in 2004, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to Vidyan Ravinthiran for his reviews “Your Thorns Are the Best Part of You” in the October 2016 issue, and “The Lonely Dream” in the February 2017 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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