The Four Quartets Prize is an award of the Poetry Society of America, presented annually since 2018 in partnership with the T.S. Eliot Foundation. It is "first and foremost a celebration of the multi-part poem, which includes entire volumes composed of a unified sequence as well as novels in verse and book-length verse narratives."[1]
The awards are named for T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, written over a four-year period. The award recognizes the 75th anniversary of Eliot's New York publisher first collecting them in a single volume in 1943.[2] [3]
The prize is awarded for a unified and complete sequence of poems.[4] Examples of existing sequences that would fit the category:
Winners receive a prize of $20,000; three finalists (including the eventual winner) receive $1,000 apiece.[5] The prize does not require that nominees have an existing body of work or reach a certain age.
The Four Quartets Prize was first presented in 2018 to Danez Smith for their sonnet "summer, somewhere."
Winners are listed first, highlighted and with a double dagger.
| Year | Poet | Work |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Dante Micheaux | The Circus |
| Catherine Barnett | "Accursed Questions" from Human Hours | |
| Meredith Stricker | anemochore | |
| 2018 | Danez Smith | "summer, somewhere" from Don't Call Us Dead |
| Geoffrey G. O'Brien | "Experience in Groups" from Experience in Groups | |
| Kathleen Peirce | Vault: a poem |