Yusef Komunyakaa Receives Wallace Stevens Poetry Award
by Sampsonia Way / September 13, 2011 / No comments
Yusef Komunyakaa on 2010 City Of Asylum's Jazz Poetry Concert. Photo © Renee Rosensteel.
Yusef Komunyakaa has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. The $100,000 prize recognizes outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. Joan Larkin has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 Academy Fellowship. The Fellowship is awarded annually to a poet for distinguished poetic achievement and provides a stipend of $25,000. The Academy’s Board of Chancellors, a body of fifteen eminent poets, selects the Wallace Stevens Award and Academy Fellowship recipients.
Yusef Komunyakaa and Joan Larkin will be honored at the fifth annual Poets Forum, October 20-22, in New York City. They will read from their work at the Poets Awards Ceremony on Friday, October 21, 7:00 p.m. at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium.
In this video created by Sampsonia Way magazine and published also by Rattapallax, Komunyakaa describes his revision process, talks about the importance of silence in poetry, and dispenses advice for young poets.
Sampsonia Way interviewed Komunyakaa in City of Asylum/Pittsburgh’s House Poem. Komunyakaa stayed in the House Poem while he was in Pittsburgh for COA/P’s Jazz Poetry concert.
