Poetry Foundation honors Robert Pinsky with a $100,000 lifetime achievement prize

NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky has received a $100,000 lifetime achievement award and poet-children’s author Nikki Grimes has been named the next Young People’s Poet Laureate, the Poetry Foundation announced Wednesday.

Pinsky, an acclaimed poet and translator who served as U.S. laureate under the auspices of the Library of Congress from 1997-2000, won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. He has long enjoyed recognition beyond the poetry world, even making public appearances with fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen.

Grimes is a bestselling author who has won numerous honors and whose books include “Bronx Masquerade” and “Jazmin’s Notebook.” As young people’s laureate, a two-year position endowed by the Poetry Foundation, she will receive $25,000 and additional funding for “a project that promotes poetry to young people and their families, teachers, and librarians,” according to the Foundation.

Also Wednesday, the Foundation gave poet-journalist-activist Luis Javier Rodriguez its $25,000 Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry and Jason Schneiderman the $10,000 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism for his essay collection “Nothingism: Poetry at the End of Print Culture.”

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Meg Day was given the first-ever Pegasus Poetry Book Prize, a $10,000 award for an unpublished first or second poetry collection by a U.S. poet 40 years or older. Day’s “Sound Lasso” will be released by Graywolf Press.

The Chicago-based Poetry Foundation was established in 2003 through a multimillion-dollar donation from philanthropist-pharmaceutical heir Ruth Lilly.