Creative Writing Department Lecturer David Ferry has won the 2011 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation. This $100,000 award recognizes lifetime accomplishments, and is one of the most prestigious awards given to U.S. poets. It is also one of the nation’s largest literary prizes.
In making the announcement, Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine, noted the quiet power in Ferry’s verse.
“David Ferry is probably best known as a translator—and his achievements in that regard are extraordinary—but I think in the end it will be his poems that last,” said Wiman. “In a time when most poetry relies on intense surface energy, Ferry’s effects are muted and subterranean—but then, in their cumulative effect, seismic. For 50 years he has practiced poetry as if it truly matters to our lives and to our souls—and now his poems have that rare power to wake us up to both.”
Ferry has authored, edited, or translated more than a dozen books. His collections of poetry and translations include On the Way to the Island (1960); A Letter, and Some Photographs (1981); Strangers: A Book of Poems (1984); Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse (1992), a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award; Dwelling Places: Poems and Translations (1993); and Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations (1999). Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations will be published in fall 2012.