Nobel in Literature awarded toSwedish Poet Tomas Tranströmer

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 was awarded to Tomas Tranströmer (Stockholm, Sweden, 1931), author of more than 15 collections of poetry and regarded as one of Sweden's most important poets.

Tranströmer's most famous works include 17 Poems (17 dikter, 1954), Windows and Stones (Klanger och spår, 1966) and Baltics (Östersjöar, 1974). His poetry has been translated into more than 50 languages.

In a story published by The New York Times, John Freeman, editor of the literary magazine Granta, said about him: "He is to Sweden what Robert Frost was to America."

The Swedish Academy's citation states the prize, endowed with 10 million kronor ($ 1.5 million), was awarded to Tranströmer "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality."


Further reading:

The Official Website of the Nobel Prize (Nobelprize.org)

The Official Website of Tomas Tranströmer (The Lion Publishing Group)

Poetry Defeats Politics (The Wall Street Journal)

The Academy of American Poets

Kay Ryan, 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Kay Ryan (San Jose, CA, 1945), former U.S. poet laureate, recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and author of several collections of poetry, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, published by Grove Press.

The Pulitzer citation calls the book "a body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebellious and yet tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind."

Finalists in the poetry category also included The Common Man, by Maurice Manning (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Break the Glass, by Jean Valentine (Copper Canyon Press).


Further reading:

The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners. Poetry (Pulitzer.org)

Kay Ryan, The Art of Poetry No. 94 (The Paris Review)

Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate (The New York Times)

Stealthy Insights Amid Short Phrases (The New York Times)

Poet Kay Ryan On Words, Writing (NPR)

Poems that turn ordinary things grand (SFGate)

Catching Up with Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate, at the National Book Festival (The Washington Post)

Kay Ryan at the Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Library of Congress

Boston Review's Annual Poetry Contest

The Fourteenth Annual Poetry Contest organized by the Boston Review is now accepting online and mail submissions through June 1, 2011, of up to five unpublished poems and no more than ten pages total. Any poet writing in English is eligible, except current and former students, relatives, or close personal friends of the judge, Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun. The winner will be announced no later than November 1, 2011, on the Boston Review web site. Read the full competition rules here.

Postmark deadline: June 1, 2011

Entry fee: $20.00

Prize: $1,500, work published in the November/December 2011 issue of Boston Review


Further reading:

Poetry at the Boston Review

The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize 2010

The Waywiser Press is now accepting submissions of poetry manuscripts for the fifth annual Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Entrants must be at least 18 years of age and may not have published more than one previous collection of poems. Manuscripts must be written in English. There is an entry fee of $25 for residents of the USA and £15 for entrants in the rest of the world. Read the full guidelines here.

Prizes:

The winner receives $ 3,000 or £ 1,750 and publication of the winning manuscript by Waywiser Press, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Postmark deadline: December 1st, 2010.

Rae Armantrout, 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Rae Armantrout (Vallejo, CA, 1947), author of ten books of poetry and a professor of writing at the University of California, San Diego, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Versed, published by Wesleyan University Press.

The Pulitzer citation calls the book, which dwells on war and cancer themes, "striking for its wit and linguistic inventiveness, offering poems that are often little thought-bombs detonating in the mind long after the first reading."

Influenced by the likes of William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson, Armantrout is one of the founding members of the West Coast group of Language poets.

Finalists in the poetry category also included Tryst, by Angie Estes (Oberlin College Press) and Inseminating the Elephant, by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon Press).

* * *

"People who want to write should read. If they want to write poetry, they should find a poet who speaks to them, and they should read everything by that poet. And then they should find another one who speaks to them and they should read everything by that poet. I don't think people do that enough these days, somehow."

rae armantrout as quoted in a transcript from the Art Beat blog at PBS.org


Further reading:

Conversation: Pulitzer Prize Winner in Poetry, Rae Armantrout (PBS)

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winners. Poetry (Pulitzer.org)

Where Every Eye's a Guard. Rae Armantrout's poetry of suspicion, by Stephen Burt (Boston Review)

‘Versed’ by Rae Armantrout: California Poet, National Recognition (Paper Cuts, NY Times)

Versed, by Rae Armantrout, Wesleyan University Press, 2009 (UPNE.com)

Rae Armantrout at the Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo, UCSD Literature Department, The New Yorker

Audio

Rae Armantrout at PennSound

Video

Video from the 2009 National Book Awards Finalist Reading

Rae Armantrout reading from her Pulitzer Prize winning book Versed (92ndStreetY channel at YouTube)

The Yale Series of Younger Poets, 2010 Competition

As from today, The Yale Series of Younger Poets is accepting submissions for the 2010 Competition. So yes, it is that time of the year again for young American poets out there to stop thinking about it and actually submit their best work for consideration at the oldest annual literary award in the United States, also one of the most prestigious given to new American poets.

Entries must be postmarked no earlier than October 1, 2009 and no later than November 15, 2009. The competition is open to any American citizen under forty years of age who has not published a book of poetry. Only one manuscript may be submitted each year, but manuscripts submitted in previous years may be resubmitted. Read the full competition rules here.

Postmark deadline: November 15, 2009

Entry fee: $15.00

Prize: Winning manuscript is published in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, author receives royalties when the book is published


Further reading:

The Yale Series of Younger Poets

Yale University Press

The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize 2009

The Waywiser Press is now accepting submissions of poetry manuscripts for the fifth annual Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, named after Anthony Hecht (New York City, NY, 1923–Washington, DC, 2004), American poet and essayist, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and inventor of the double dactyl, a humorous poetic form which begins with two three-syllable nonsense words such as "Higgledy, piggledy."

Entrants must be at least 18 years of age and may not have published more than one previous collection of poems. Manuscripts must be written in English. There is an entry fee of $25 for residents of the USA and £15 for entrants in the rest of the world. Read the full guidelines here.

Prizes:

The winner receives $ 3,000 or £ 1,750 and publication of the winning manuscript by Waywiser Press, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Postmark deadline: December 1st, 2009.


Further reading:

Times Topics: Anthony Hecht (The New York Times)

Anthony Hecht at poets.org, The Poetry Foundation and the English Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers

The sixth-annual Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers, presented by the Kenyon Review, is now open to high school sophomores and juniors. The winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop in Gambier, Ohio, in the summer of 2009, each runner-up receives a partial scholarship. Entries must be submitted through the month of November, using the Kenyon Review Submission Manager.


Further reading:

The Kenyon Review

Past Award Recipientes

Call for Entries at the Kenyon College website

Poetry Center calling poets for Juried Reading

The Poetry Center of Chicago invites poets to submit unpublished work for consideration in the 15th Annual Juried Reading. Eight finalists will have their poetry published in a chapbook by Dancing Girl Press as well as on the Poetry Center website. The Final Judge for the 2009 edition will be Brenda Hillman.

The Juried Reading is open to all poets residing in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Poets may be unpublished or have published no more than one full-length book of poetry. Send poems to: 15th Annual Juried Reading, The Poetry Center of Chicago, 37 S. Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603. Poems will be accepted by US mail only. There is a $15 jury fee, check or money order. The contest is free for Poetry Center members. Read the submission guidelines here.

Prizes:

1st: $1,500
2nd: $500
3rd: $250

5 finalists receive $50

Postmark deadline: January 29, 2009


Further reading:

Past edition winners

More on Brenda Hillman

Glück receives Wallace Stevens Award

Louise Glück (New York, NY, 1943) has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. Since its inception in 1994, the award is given annually to "recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry". The prize bears the name of Wallace Stevens (Reading, PA, 1879-Hartford, CT, 1955), considered one of the major American poets of the 20th century.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly (Palo Alto, CA, 1951) was named recipient of the Academy Fellowship, given since 1946 in memory of James Ingram Merrill.


Further reading:

Former US poet laureate receives $100,000 prize (AP)

Poetry Award for Glück (The New York Times)

More on Louise Glück

Brigit Pegeen Kelly at Google Book Search

The Yale Series of Younger Poets

The Yale Younger Poets prize is the oldest annual literary award in the United States, also one of the most prestigious given to new American poets. Yale University Press will begin accepting submissions for the 2009 competition in just a few weeks, so it is now an excellent time to start preparing your entry according to these guidelines.

Take note: entries must be postmarked no earlier than October 1, 2008 and no later than November 15, 2008. The competition is open to any American citizen under forty years of age who has not published a book of poetry. There is an entry fee of $15.00, only one manuscript may be submitted.

The winner of the 2008 competition, as chosen by judge Louise Glück, was Arda Collins’s It Is Daylight.


Further reading:

Website for The Yale Series of Younger Poets

More on Louise Glück

Arda Collins at The New Yorker, Reading Between A and B, GutCult

Atwood wins Prince of Asturias Prize

Canadian author Margaret Atwood was on Wednesday awarded with Spain's Prince of Asturias Prize for literature. The poet, novelist and literary critic won Britain's Booker Prize in 2000 for her novel The Blind Assassin and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction in 1985 for The Handmaid's Tale, which was later made into a film by german director Volker Schlöndorff.


Further reading:

Canada's Margaret Atwood wins Spain's top literature prize (AFP)

Margaret Atwood wins Spanish literary award (AP)

Margaret Atwood's "The Journals of Susanna Moodie" by R. P. Bilan