Kimiko Hahn is this year's recipient of the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which is sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and presented to a living U.S. poet for their outstanding lifetime achievement. Hahn, along with the winners of the $7,500 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and the inaugural $10,000 Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry, will be honored in October at the Pegasus Awards ceremony in Chicago.
"Kimiko Hahn's poetry projects the soul and challenges the human spirit by inviting readers to explore the mysteries of science and nature," said foundation president Michelle T. Boone. "It's our privilege to acknowledge her decades of advancing poetry through her writing and teaching."
The Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry, given in recognition of commitment and extraordinary work in poetry and the literary arts through administration, advocacy, education, publishing, or service, goes to Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, founders of Cave Canem, established in 1996 to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African American poets in the literary landscape.
"The impact of Toi and Cornelius's work as mentors, collaborators, and advocates cannot be overstated," said Poetry magazine editor Adrian Matejka. "As a Cave Canem fellow myself, I have been the grateful recipient of their service to poetry and the path they've created for countless other Black poets."
Douglas Kearney will receive the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, recognizing an outstanding book-length work of criticism published in the U.S. in the prior calendar year, for Optic Subwoof. The other finalists were Auden and the Muse of History by Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb, My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing by Carl Phillips, and Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell.