Four Quartets Prize
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]
Background
[edit]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
[edit]The prize is awarded for a unified and complete sequence of poems.[4] Examples of existing sequences that would fit the category:[1]
- Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), or The Anniad (1950)
- John Berryman, 77 Dream Poems (1964), or His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968)
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
[edit]Winners are listed first, highlighted and with a double dagger.
| Year | Poet | Work |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | ‡Dobby Gibson | Hold Everything (Graywolf Press) |
| CAConrad | Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books) | |
| Morgan Võ | "To Market” from The Selkie (The Song Cave) | |
| 2024 | ‡Robyn Schiff | Information Desk: An Epic (Penguin) |
| Dong Li | The Orange Tree (University of Chicago Press) | |
| Paisley Rekdal | West: A Translation (Copper Canyon Press) | |
| 2023 | ‡Courtney Faye Taylor | Concentrate (Graywolf Press) |
| Brenda Hillman | “The Sickness & the World Soul” from her collection In a Few Minutes Before Later (Wesleyan University Press) | |
| Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué | Madness (Nightboat Books) | |
| 2022 | ‡Muriel Leung | Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books) |
| Desiree C. Bailey | What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press) | |
| Forrest Gander | “Twice Alive” from his book Twice Alive (New Directions) | |
| 2021 | ‡John Murillo | “A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn” from Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books) |
| Don Mee Choi | DMZ Colony (Wave Books) | |
| Srikanth Reddy | Underworld Lit (Wave Books) | |
| 2020 | ‡Brian Teare | “Toxics Release Inventory (Essay on Man)” from his collection Doomstead Days (Nightboat Books) |
| Ilya Kaminsky | Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) | |
| Prageeta Sharma | Grief Sequence (Wave Books) | |
| 2019 | ‡Dante Micheaux | The Circus (Indolent Books) |
| Catherine Barnett | "Accursed Questions" from Human Hours (Graywolf Press) | |
| Meredith Stricker | anemochore (Newfound Press) | |
| 2018[2] | ‡Danez Smith | "summer, somewhere" from Don't Call Us Dead (Graywolf Books) |
| Geoffrey G. O'Brien | "Experience in Groups" from Experience in Groups (Wave Books) | |
| Kathleen Peirce | Vault: A Poem (New Michigan Press) |
References
[edit]- 1 2 "Four Quartets Prize - Poetry Society of America". www.poetrysociety.org. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
- 1 2 3 Harriet Staff (April 16, 2018). "Danez Smith Wins Inaugural Four Quartets Prize". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
- ↑ Kirk, Russell (2008). Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century. ISI Books. p. 239. OCLC 80106144.
- ↑ Hertzel, Laurie (April 13, 2018). "Minneapolis poet Danez Smith wins Four Quartets Prize". Star Tribune. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
- ↑ "Inaugural Four Quartets Prize Finalists Announced - Poetry Society of America". www.poetrysociety.org. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
External links
[edit]- The Four Quartets Prize at the Poetry Society of America official website