Kwame Dawes Named Chancellor of Academy of American Poets

The Board of Chancellors of the American Academy of Poets, members of which serve for a period of six years, consults “with the organization on matters of artistic programming, serve as judges for the organization’s largest prizes for poets, and act as ambassadors of poetry in the world at large.” Present members, all of whom made the new selections, include Elizabeth Alexander, Ellen Bass, Forrest Gander, Linda Gregerson, Terrance Hayes, Brenda Hillman, Khaled Mattawa, Marilyn Nelson, Alicia Ostriker, Claudia Rankine, Alberto Ríos, and David St. John. Kwame Dawes, Marilyn Chi and Marie Howe “will be filling the seats vacated by Toi Derricotte, Jane Hirshfield, and Arthur Sze, whose terms have concluded.”Ellen Bass, who nominated Dawes, stated that his:

“brilliant poetry is deeply compassionate, ruthlessly honest, rich in spirit, imagination, and intelligence. His colossal outpouring of poems both stun and console us. Rooted in music, they sing of struggle and transcendence. The breadth of his work as a poet of witness, documentarian, collaborator, performer and more has brought the world to poetry and poetry to the world.”

The first African winner of the Poets & Writers Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers Award, Dawes is a recipient of the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for service to the arts in South Carolina, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry, the Musgrave Silver Medal for contribution to the Arts in Jamaica, and a Pushcart Prize. A co-founder and programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, he is currently the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English.