Arthur Sze has been named the 25th U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2025-2026. The winner of the Library of Congress's 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Sze will begin his laureateship with a public reading at the library on October 9. He succeeds Ada Limón, who served two terms in the position. During his term as poet laureate, Sze, who lives in Santa Fe, N.Mex., plans to have a special focus on translating poetry originally written in other languages.
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| Arthur Sze (photo: Mariana Cook) |
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"Last fall the Library of Congress honored Arthur Sze with our Bobbitt Prize, for lifetime achievement in poetry; this fall we are thrilled to bring him back to the Library as the nation's poet laureate," said Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Randolph Newlen. "His poetry is distinctly American in its focus on the landscapes of the Southwest, where he has lived for many years, as well as in its great formal innovation. Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences--and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space."
Sze commented: "What an amazing honor to be named the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States. As the son of Chinese immigrants, and as a sophomore who decided to leave MIT to pursue a dream of becoming a poet, I never would have guessed that so many decades later I would receive this recognition. It's a recognition that belongs to teachers, librarians, editors, poets, readers--everyone who works tirelessly on behalf of poetry. As laureate I feel a great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives. We live in such a fast-paced world: poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully."
Sze is the author of 12 poetry collections, most recently Into the Hush (2025), as well as the prose collection The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (2025). His other collections include The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021), which won a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation; Sight Lines (2019), winner of 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), winner of the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and Archipelago (1995), which won an American Book Award. Sze has also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon II (2024).
His many honors include the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from Yale University, 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.