Sharon Olds wins $100,000 poetry prize

NEW YORK – One of the country’s leading poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds, has won a $100,000 lifetime achievement award.

The Academy of American Poets told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Olds had been given the Wallace Stevens Award for “proven mastery in the art of poetry.” Olds, 73, won the Pulitzer in 2013 for “Stag’s Leap.” She is also known for “The Dead and the Living” and “Strike Sparks.”

The academy announced several other prizes, including a $25,000 honour for Pulitzer winner and former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, who received a fellowship for “distinguished poetic achievement.” Lynn Emanuel’s “The Nerve of It” won the $25,000 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for last year’s best poetry book.

Mary Hickman’s “Rayfish” was named as the outstanding second book of poetry. Ron Padgett was cited for his translation of “Zone: Selected Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire” and Stephen Sartarelli for his translation of “The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini.” Twenty-year-old Donte Collins received an award for most promising young poet.

The academy is a non-profit organization founded in 1934. Previous award winners include Sylvia Plath, Robert Pinsky and Mark Strand.