Yale Library announces new literary prize for American poetry

Beginning in 2025, Yale Library will award a new literary prize, the Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry. The Willis Prize will be awarded every other year to a poet who has published a book in the prior two years that, in the opinion of the judging committee, “represents the highest achievement in the field of American poetry.” The recipient will receive $25,000. 

“The new Willis Prize reaffirms Yale Library’s profound commitment to the study, celebration, and creation of American poetry,” said Barbara Rockenbach, Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian. “We trace this commitment through our extensive circulating collections and online research resources; through generations of librarian and curator expertise; and, very visibly, through the collections and activities of the Beinecke Library.”  

The Willis Prize is an extension and evolution of the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, established in 1948 with funding from philanthropist Paul Mellon’s Bollingen Foundation and moved to Yale Library in 1949. Both prizes are administered by Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  

For decades the Bollingen Prize has been awarded to a senior poet worthy of a lifetime achievement award for a book published during the award period—making the prize a unique hybrid of a book prize and a lifetime achievement award. Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore were among the early Bollingen recipients; recent recipients include Joy Harjo (2023), Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge (2021), and Charles Bernstein (2019). Now, the prize charge language has been modified to officially incorporate “lifetime achievement” into the Bollingen Prize while adding the Willis Prize to celebrate and honor an exceptional book published in the prize period by a poet at any stage in their career.  

“These changes reflect the spirit of the prize when it was founded while at the same time recognizing the traditions of the prize and the practice of judges over some 75 years,” said Michelle Light, director of the Beinecke Library and associate university librarian for Special Collections.  

This year’s Bollingen Prize committee will select the recipients of the 2025 Bollingen Prize, which carries an award of $125,000, and the inaugural Willis Prize. The 2025 awards will be announced in late January, and the names of the committee members will be announced after the awards are made. There is no application, submission, or public nomination process for either prize.  

The Yale Collection of American Literature, a centerpiece of the Beinecke Library’s vast collections, encompasses an unmatched array of rare books, manuscripts, personal papers, and other archival materials related to American poets and poetry. The Beinecke Library also hosts and convenes some of the campus’s most visible poetry events, including the Mark Strand Memorial Reading series, debuted in 2018, and the annual Yale Student Poets Reading. 

Patricia Willis, for whom the prize is named, is a literary historian and scholar particularly noted for her groundbreaking research on Marianne Moore and other female poets of the American Modernist movement. She served as curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature from 1987 until her retirement in 2008 and preceded Nancy Kuhl as director of the Bollingen Prize program.  

“I’m delighted that our new prize will honor Patricia Cannon Willis’s commitment to developing an inclusive view of American literature and her long and outstanding stewardship of the Yale Collection of American Literature,” Kuhl said. “The Willis Prize suitably honors Pat’s legendary efforts to support countless poets, scholars, librarians, and students. The Beinecke Library’s collections, activities, and generous literary prize programs have gained broad national and international attention in both creative and academic communities; the Willis Prize will extend the library’s involvement in and significant contributions to the living art of American poetry.”

—Patricia M. Carey