The O.B. Hardison, Jr., Poetry Prize was awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...

 to honor a U.S. poet whose art and teaching demonstrated great imagination and daring. The poet must have published at least one book within the last five years, must have made important contributions as a teacher, and must be committed to furthering the understanding of poetry.

The prize is named after former Folger Library Director O.B. Hardison, Jr. (1928–1990), who founded the Folger Poetry Series in 1970. Hardison Prize honorees received $10,000.

Recipients

• 2009—Juliana Spahr
  Juliana Spahr
  Juliana Spahr is an American poet, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S...
  
  
• 2008—Mary Kinzie
  Mary Kinzie
  -Life:She received her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1967, and returned there to teach in 1975. She won Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson fellowships to do graduate work at the Free University of Berlin and Johns Hopkins University....
  
  
• 2007—David Wojahn
  David Wojahn
  David Wojahn is a contemporary American poet who teaches poetry in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts...
  
  
• 2006—David Rivard
  David Rivard
  David Rivard is an American poet.His poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and TriQuarterly. David Rivard is Poetry Editor at the Harvard Review, and teaches at the University of New Hampshire, and the Vermont College...
  
  
• 2005—Tony Hoagland
  Tony Hoagland
  Anthony Dey Hoagland is an American poet and writer. His poetry collection 2003, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and a...
  
  
• 2004—Reginald Gibbons
  Reginald Gibbons
  Reginald Gibbons is an American poet, fiction writer, translator, literary critic, artist, and Professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University...
  
  
• 2003—Cornelius Eady
  Cornelius Eady
  Cornelius Eady is an American poet focusing largely on matters of race and society, particularly the trials of the African-American race in the United States. His poetry often centers around jazz and blues, family life, violence, and societal problems stemming from questions of race and class...
  
  
• 2002—Ellen Bryant Voigt
  Ellen Bryant Voigt
  Ellen Bryant Voigt is an American poet. She has published six collections of poetry and a collection of craft essays. Her poetry collection Shadow of Heaven was a finalist for the National Book Award and Kyrie was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poetry has been...
  
  
• 2001—David St. John
  David St. John
  -Biography:Born in Fresno, California, he was educated at California State University, Fresno, where he studied with poet Philip Levine, and at the University of Iowa, receiving an M.F.A. in 1974...
  
  
• 2000—Rachel Hadas
  Rachel Hadas
  Rachel Hadas is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is Classics: Essays , and her most recent poetry collection is The Ache of Appetite . Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ingram Merrill Foundation Grants, the O.B...
  
  
• 1999—Alan Shapiro
  Alan Shapiro
  Alan Shapiro is an American poet and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of nine poetry books, including Tantalus in Love, Song and Dance, and The Dead Alive and Busy. He received the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Los Angeles...
  
  
• 1998—Heather McHugh
  Heather McHugh
  -Life:Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca . They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River...
  
  
• 1997—Frank Bidart
  Frank Bidart
  Frank Bidart is an American academic and poet.-Biography:In 1957, he began to study at the University of California at Riverside and went on to Harvard, where he was a student and friend of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop...
  
  
• 1996—Jorie Graham
  Jorie Graham
  Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...
  
  
• 1995—E. Ethelbert Miller
  E. Ethelbert Miller
  Eugene Ethelbert Miller, best known as E. Ethelbert Miller is an African American poet and teacher.-Life:...
  
  
• 1994—R.H.W. Dillard
• 1993—John Frederick Nims
  John Frederick Nims
  John Frederick Nims was an American poet and academic.-Life:He graduated from DePaul University, University of Notre Dame with an M.A., and from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1945.He published reviews of the works by Robert Lowell and W. S. Merwin...
  
  
• 1992—Cynthia Macdonald
  Cynthia Macdonald
  -Life:She was educated at Bennington College, Mannes College of Music, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, where she was certified as a psychoanalyst in 1986. Originally Macdonald intended to make a...
  
  
• 1991—Brendan Galvin
  Brendan Galvin
  -Life:During forty years of college teaching, he served as Wyndham Robertson Visiting Writer in Residence in the MA program at Hollins University, Coal Royalty Distinguished Writer in Residence in the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa and Whichard chair in the Humanities at East...
  
  

See also

• American poetry
• List of poetry awards
• List of literature awards
• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature

External links

• http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=552 Folger Library Web page on past winners of the Hardison Prize