February 12, 2025
Major Jackson wins inaugural Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry
The award recognizes an exceptional contribution to American poetry.
Congratulations to Major Jackson on winning the inaugural Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry!
The award, from Yale Library, recognizes "Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002–2022" as an exceptional contribution to American poetry.
“Major Jackson’s poems punch through an age of violent shifts with a poetry of exuberance and hope. The nimble mind in ‘Razzle Dazzle’ is attuned to the pressures of a self in transformation,” write judges Joy Harjo, Sandra Lim, and Karin Roffman.
“Every poem is a beloved relative in a room of rowdy history. The poems find lift in transition even as they defy limitation through their enormous linguistic imagination and spectacle.”
