Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows 2019
BY The Editors
2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows Franny Choi, Jane Huffman, José Olivarez, Justin Phillip Reed, and Michael Wasson.
“Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses.
Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in
the textbooks’ selective silences.”
—“The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On”
“The body, like a crowd, moves without a mind. Moves without
an ambit. Tilts without an axis. Pulls without a magnet.”
—“Revision”
“My family started migrating in 1987 and they never stopped. I was born mid-migration. I’ve made my home in that motion.”
—“Ars Poetica”
“Deliver me
from the touch of a territory I have no real name for
but hawáawa because every story I want to tell
begins & ends with blood & us reaching for each other.”
—“To Memorize the Continuous Lines of Your Bones [An American Lullaby]”
“The night choir-sways down my throat’s red aisle.
My muscles flaccid in felt ventriloquism.
The vessels sing a sequence of chains.
They chew through my confessional face.”
—“Of Someone Else Entirely”
Established in 1989 by Ruth Lilly to encourage the further writing and study of poetry, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship program has dramatically expanded since its inception. Until 1995, university writing programs nationwide each nominated one student poet for a single fellowship; from 1996 until 2007, two fellowships were awarded. In 2008, the competition was opened to all U.S. poets between 21 and 31 years of age, and the number of fellowships increased to five, totaling $75,000. In 2013, the Poetry Foundation received a generous gift from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund to create the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, which increased the fellowship amount from $15,000 to $25,800.
To start reading the poems in the portfolio, click here.
The editorial staff of the Poetry Foundation. See the Poetry Foundation staff list and editorial team masthead.