Posted by: Keir
Lucille Clifton has won the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The Poetry Foundation site has some good links — actual poems and an interview, too. For those who don’t follow the glitzy poetry scene, the Ruth Lilly “honors a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.” Furthermore:
Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation’s largest literary honors.
If you ask me, a poetry award needs to hand out $100k before it’s even taken seriously.
Links to reviews of Clifton’s work? Check.
Mercy. 2004. BOA, $22 (1-929918-54-2).
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000. 2000. BOA, hardcover, $25 (1-880238-87-X).
The Terrible Stories. 1996. BOA, $20 (1-88023-836-5).
The Book of Light. 1993. Copper Canyon, $21 (1-55659-051-2).
June 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
[…] And not just a piece of fruit, either. Her book, Half of a Yellow Sun, has won the Orange Prize, and with it, about $60,000 (presumably because of the poetic nature of her prose). From Reuters, via the New York Times (”Nigerian Author Wins Top Women’s Fiction Prize“): LONDON (Reuters) - Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie landed the Orange Prize on Wednesday, one of the literary world’s top awards given to women writers, for a novel set in the 1960s Biafran civil war. […]
July 17th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
[…] That’s their richest poetry prize? Even considering the strength of the pound against the dollar, we Yanks have them beat by a mile. And they say we don’t appreciate culture. […]
September 13th, 2007 at 9:58 am
[…] It’s not the mad bank that the strictly poetry awards hand out, but $25K will buy anyone a lot of writing time. […]