Levine Receives Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award

The New York City–based Academy of American Poets has announced the winners of the 2013 poetry prizes, an annual awards series through which over $200,000 is given to poets at various stages of their careers.  

Former United States poet laureate Philip Levine has been awarded the Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement. The $100,000 prize is given annually by the Academy for “outstanding and proven mastery of the art of poetry.” Levine’s collections include Ashes, which won the National Book Award in 1979 and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1980; What Work Is, which won the National Book Award in 1991; The Simple Truth, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995; and, most recently, News of the World (Knopf, 2009). Levine, a former Detroit autoworker, was appointed to the poet laureate post in late 2011.

Carolyn Forché has won the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, which offers a $25,000 prize for “distinguished poetic achievement.”

Patricia Smith has been awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, a $25,000 award given for the best book of poetry published in the previous year, for her most recent collection, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, published by Coffee House Press in 2012.

Jillian Weise won the James Laughlin Award for her recent collection, The Book of Goodbyes (BOA Editions, 2013). The $5,000 prize is given to honor a poet's second book.

John Taylor received the $25,000 Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Fellowship for his translation of Selected Poems by the Italian poet Lorenzo Calogero.
 
Cynthia Hogue and Sylvain Gallais received the $1,000 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for their translation of Fortino Sámano ("The Overflowing of the Poem"), by Virginie Lalucq and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Visit the Academy of American Poets website for more information and submission guidelines for the 2014 awards.

In the video below, Philip Levine reads a selection of poems, including "What Work Is." Also listen to a podcast of Levine reading his poem "The Mercy."