Library of Congress Awards Bobbitt Poetry Prize to Arthur Sze
The Library of Congress will award the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to National Book Award winner Arthur Sze for lifetime achievement in poetry.
Sze of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will receive the prize on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 6:30 p.m. during an event in the Mumford Room of the Library’s Madison Building. The event is free, and registration is open to the public. Sze will also give a short talk on poetry, followed by a moderated discussion with Rob Casper, the Library’s head of poetry and literature.
Sze’s presentation is titled “Lines of Sight, and Beyond.” In it he will braid some of his poems with details about his evolution as a poet, insights about his creative process and ideas of exploration and freedom in context of the American experience.
The 2024 Bobbitt Prize was awarded for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Librarian of Congress, based on the recommendation of an internal committee.
“In 11 books and over more than 50 years, Arthur Sze has developed a signature lyricism of seeing. His poems focus on images and declarations – but they also move through breathtaking juxtapositions, create layers of fragments that open up rather than direct their readers. Sze’s imaginative capaciousness pulls in languages, traditions and systems from both East and West, and it can speak to the cosmos then turn to the smallest natural detail,” the committee wrote in its citation for Sze. “His latest collection, ‘The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems,’ captures the range and the commitment of his life’s work, to create ‘points of connection, reflection, and refraction . . . part of an organic growing whole.’”
Arthur Sze is the author of 11 poetry collections, most recently “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems” (2021), which received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation. His other collections include “Sight Lines” (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; “Compass Rose” (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; “The Ginkgo Light” (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; “The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998” (1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and “Archipelago “(1995), selected for an American Book Award. Sze has also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, “The Silk Dragon II” (2024).
Sze’s many honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2012–2017) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives.
The biennial Bobbitt Prize, which carries a $10,000 award, recognizes a book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years or the lifetime achievement of an American poet. The prize is made possible by the family of Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt of Austin, Texas, in her memory, and awarded at the Library of Congress. While a graduate student in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s, Rebekah Johnson, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s sister, met college student O.P. Bobbitt when they both worked in the cataloging department of the Library of Congress. They married and returned to Texas.
Learn more about the Bobbitt Prize, including past winners at loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/prizes/bobbitt-prize/.
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.
###
Media Contact: Brett Zongker, bzongker@loc.gov
PR 24-099
11/12/2024
ISSN 0731-3527