Marilyn Nelson given $100,000 award from Poetry Foundation

Marilyn Nelson is receiving a $100,000 lifetime achievement award from the Poetry Foundation, which also is honouring Naomi Shihab Nye and Terrance Hayes.

The Chicago-based foundation announced Tuesday that Nelson has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Nelson is a three-time National Book Award finalist whose works include “Carver: A Life in Poems” and “The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems.” Previous winners of the Lilly prize include Adrienne Rich and W.S. Merwin.

Nye has been named the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2019-2021, and will receive $25,000. Nye hopes to focus on underserved and rural communities. Hayes’ “To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight” won the $7,500 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism.