Marilyn Nelson has won the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award, a lifetime achievement honor presented by the Academy of American Poets for “proven mastery in the art of poetry.”
“For decades Marilyn Nelson has written a poetry that is insightful, moving, and clear, brimming with history but aimed at the future," Academy chancellor and fellow poet Kevin Young said in a statement released Monday.
"Whether writing of her father’s generation of Tuskegee Airmen, in the voices of the enslaved speaking of freedom, or about the woman in the mirror, Nelson’s work is necessary and humane, and has led the way on the page and in the world.”
Nelson, 76, is known for such collections as “The Homeplace” and “Fields of Praise,” while also writing children's books and translating works from the Danish and ancient Greek.
John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich and Sonia Sanchez are among previous winners of the Stevens award.
