Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition

The Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the first collection of a promising American poet. The contest was founded in 1919, and is the oldest annual literary award in the United States.

Each year the Press publishes one book-length manuscript by a United States citizen under the age of forty who has not previously published a book of poetry. The winner receives royalties upon publication of the book. All poems must be original, and only one manuscript may be entered at a time.

The contest is regarded by some ^[1] to have been at its height from 1947 to 1959, when W. H. Auden was choosing the winners. His then-young poets included Adrienne Rich, James Wright, W. S. Merwin, John Ashbery, and John Hollander. The period was also notable for the two-time refusal of Sylvia Plath's manuscript Two Lovers,^[2] and Colossus which was subsequently published in England.^[1]The contest is regarded to have solidified its importance in American literature under the judgeship of Stephen Vincent Benet^[3]. Benet was judge, 1933 - 1942, followed by Archibald MacLeish, 1944 - 1946. Margaret Walker's For My People was the last volume selected by Benet. Auden assumed the judgeship after MacLeish. The 1969-1977 period, overseen by Stanley Kunitz, included volumes by Carolyn Forché and Robert Hass; Hass later became the Poet Laureate of the United States.

Past Winners

This partial list is from The Yale Younger Poets Anthology (1998).^[4]

• 2008 — Arda Collins, It Is Daylight
• 2007 — Fady Joudah, The Earth in the Attic
• 2006 — Jessica Fisher, Frail-Craft
• 2005 — Jay Hopler, Green Squall
• 2004 — Richard Siken, Crush
• 2003 — Peter Streckfus, The Cuckoo
• 2002 — Loren Goodman, Famous Americans
• 2001 — Sean Singer, Discography
• 2000 — Maurice Manning, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions
• 1999 — Davis McCombs, Ultima Thule
• 1998 — Craig Arnold, Shells
• 1997 — Talvikki Ansel, My Shining Archipelago
• 1996 — Ellen Hinsey, Cities of Memory
• 1995 — Tony Crunk, Living in the Resurrection
• 1994 — Valerie Wohlfeld, Thinking the World Visible
• 1993 — Jody Gladding, Stone Crop
• 1992 — Nick Samaras, Hands of the Saddlemaker
• 1990 — Daniel Hall, Hermit with Landscape
• 1989 — Thomas Bolt, Out of the Woods
• 1987 — Julie Agoos, Above the Land
• 1986 — Brigit Pegeen Kelly, To the Place of Trumpets
• 1984 — Richard Kenney, The Evolution of the Flightless Bird
• 1983 — Cathy Song, Picture Bride
• 1981 — John Bensko, Green Soldiers
• 1980 — William Virgil Davis, One Way to Reconstruct the Scene
• 1978 — Leslie Ullman, Natural Histories
• 1977 — Olga Broumas, Beginning with O
• 1976 — Carolyn Forché, Gathering the Tribes
• 1975 — Maura Stanton, Snow on Snow
• 1974 — Michael Ryan, Threats Instead of Trees
• 1973 — Robert Hass, Field Guide
• 1972 — Michael Casey, Obscenities

In earlier years, winners included Frances Frost (1929), James Agee (1934), Muriel Rukeyser (1935), William Meredith (1944), Alan Dugan (1961), Adrienne Rich (1951), John Ashbery (1956), John Hollander (1958), William Dickey (1959), Jack Gilbert (1962), Peter Davison (1963), Jean Valentine (1965), and James Tate (1967).

See also

• American poetry
• List of poetry awards
• List of literature awards
• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature

References

External links

• Information on the competition from Yale University Press