Poetry Society of America - Awards Given By The Society

Awards Given By The Society

In 1915 the Society began conferring awards honoring innovation and mastery of the form by emerging and established American poets. By 1930 the Society began awarding the Frost Medal for lifetime achievement in American poetry and the Shelley Memorial Award and stipend to a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need. In 1984 the Frost Medal became an annual award. The Shelley has been awarded every year since 1930, except for 1933.

• Frost Medal — awarded annually for distinguished lifetime achievement in American poetry.
• Shelley Memorial Award — offered by the society to a poet living in the United States who is chosen on the basis of "genius and need."

Chapbook Fellowships

Beginning in 2003, the Society began sponsoring an annual chapbook contest, awarding four fellowships to poets who have not yet published a full-length poetry collection. These fellowships include:

• The National Chapbook Fellowship — given to two US poets who have yet to publish a first book of poems.
• The New York Chapbook Fellowship — given to two New York poets under 30 years of age who have yet to publish a first book of poems.

Annual Awards

In addition to the Frost Medal and Shelley Award, the Poetry Society gives out the following awards.

• Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award — awarded for a poem inspired by Emily Dickinson.
• Cecil Hemley Memorial Award — awarded for a lyric poem that addresses a philosophical or epistemological concern.
• Lyric Poetry Award — awarded for a lyric poem on any subject.
• Lucille Medwick Memorial Award — awarded for an original poem in any form on a humanitarian theme.
• Alice Fay di Castagnola Award — given annually to a poet who is recognized at a crucial stage in his or her work.
• Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award — awarded for the best unpublished poem by a student in grades 9 through 12 from the United States.
• George Bogin Memorial Award — awarded for a selection of four or five poems that use language in an original way to reflect the encounter of the ordinary and the extraordinary and to take a stand against oppression in any of its forms.
• Robert H. Winner Memorial Award — awarded to original work being done in mid-career by a poet who has not had substantial recognition.
• Louis Hammer Memorial Award — awarded for a distinguished poem in the surrealist manner.
• Norma Farber First Book Award — for a first book of original poetry written by an American and published in either a hard or soft cover in a standard edition.
• William Carlos Williams Award — offered by the society for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit, or university press.