The Academy of American Poets has revealed the winners of the 2014 American Poets Prizes. The organization will give out more than $200,000 to poets in award money.
Robert Hass has won the Wallace Stevens Award, an honor which recognizes “proven mastery in the art of poetry” and comes with a $100,000 stipend. Hass is the author of a number of collections of poetry including The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems. Tracy K. Smith has received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, which recognizes “distinguished poetic achievement” and comes with a stipend of $25,000. Her most recent collection, Life on Mars, won the Pulitzer Prize
Rigoberto González’s book Unpeopled Eden has received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, which includes a $25,000 purse. The award “recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year.” Brian Blanchfield’s book A Several World has been awarded the James Laughlin Award, a prize for a “superior second book of poetry by an American poet,” which carries a $25,000 prize.
W. S. Merwin’s Selected Translations has won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, which includes a $1,000 award. Luigi Bonaffini’s book The Bedroom, a translation of Attilio Bertolucci’s La Camera Da Letto, has won the Raiziss/De Palchi Book Prize, a $10,000 award. Wendy Chen has won the inaugural Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Poet Award for her poem “They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea.” The prize includes a $1,000 stipend.
The award winners will be honored at the American Poets Prizes ceremony on October 17, 2014, at 7:00 p.m. at The New School in New York, in a ceremony that is open to the public.