Yale Series of Younger Poets

The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States.

Each year, the Younger Poets Competition accepts submissions from American poets who have not previously published a book of poetry. Once the judge has chosen a winner, the Press publishes a book-length manuscript of the winner's poetry as the next volume in the series. All poems must be original, and only one manuscript may be entered at a time.

Rules and eligibility

Contest requirements were first articulated in the summer of 1920. The series had already published four books, all written by Yale students, and the judges sought to attract a nationwide pool of applicants. A promotional statement gave the following, somewhat vague eligibility requirements: "Anyone is eligible provided he (or she) is young and comparatively unknown. The age limit is understood to be about thirty." A formal set of rules was adopted in 1924. In addition to specifying page limits and other manuscript requirements, these new rules limited the contest to American citizens younger than 30. However, current rules allow poets of any age who have not published a book of poetry to be considered. Although the contest was briefly opened to any writer of English-language poetry under Auden's judgeship, it has remained limited to American citizens ever since.

History

20th century

File:The Tempering - Howard Buck.jpg

The Tempering, published by Howard Buck in 1919, is the first volume in the series.

The Younger Poets Series was established in 1919 by Clarence Day, whose brother George Parmly Day founded Yale University Press with his wife Wilhelmine in 1908. The competition's first judge, Charlton Miner Lewis, was a prominent professor in Yale's English department. The inaugural competition took place after the end of World War I, just as an influx of young veterans returned from fighting in Europe and entered college. Modernist poetry emerged in this period, but early entries in the series reflected the neoclassical tastes of the older generation adjudicating the competition, all men who had received degrees from Yale in the late-19th century. The anglophilic publishers were heavily influenced by English poetry, especially the contemporary Georgian poetry, and the competition itself was directly influenced by the similar "Adventures All" poetry series of Oxford University Press.

The contest solidified its importance in American literature under the judgeship of Stephen Vincent Benét. Benet was judge from 1933 to 1942, followed by Archibald MacLeish from 1944 to 1946. Margaret Walker's For My People was the last volume selected by Benet. Auden assumed the judgeship after MacLeish.

The contest is regarded by some to have been at its height from 1947 to 1959, when W. H. Auden was its judge. His then-young poets included Adrienne Rich, James Wright, W. S. Merwin, John Ashbery, and John Hollander. The period was also notable for the two-time refusal of Sylvia Plath's manuscript Two Lovers, and Colossus, which was subsequently published in England.

Between 1969 and 1977, overseen by Stanley Kunitz, included volumes by Carolyn Forché and Robert Hass; Hass later became the Poet Laureate of the United States.

21st century

The judgeship of W. S. Merwin, from 1998 to 2003, was fraught with controversy, as he refused to select a winner the first year that he was judge. Louise Glück, who is widely considered to have revived the prize's stature, judged the award from 2003 to 2010. Rae Armantrout judged the prize from 2021 to 2025. Monica Youn is the current judge.

Judges

• Judges of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
• Charlton M. Lewis (1919–1923)
  Charlton M. Lewis
  (1919–1923)
• Frederick E. Pierce (1923)
  Frederick E. Pierce
  (1923)
• Edward Bliss Reed (1923–24)
  Edward Bliss Reed
  (1923–24)
• William Alexander Percy (1925–1932)
  William Alexander Percy
  (1925–1932)
• Stephen Vincent Benét (1933–1942)
  Stephen Vincent Benét
  (1933–1942)
• Archibald MacLeish (1942–1945)
  Archibald MacLeish
  (1942–1945)
• W. H. Auden (1946–1958)
  W. H. Auden
  (1946–1958)
• Dudley Fitts (1958–1968)
  Dudley Fitts
  (1958–1968)
• Stanley Kunitz (1969–1976)
  Stanley Kunitz
  (1969–1976)
• Richard Hugo (1977–1982)
  Richard Hugo
  (1977–1982)
• James Merrill (1983–1989)
  James Merrill
  (1983–1989)
• James Dickey (1990–1996)
  James Dickey
  (1990–1996)
• W. S. Merwin (1997–2003)
  W. S. Merwin
  (1997–2003)
• Louise Glück (2003–2010)
  Louise Glück
  (2003–2010)
• Carl Phillips(2011–2020)
  Carl Phillips
  (2011–2020)
• Rae Armantrout(2021–2025)
  Rae Armantrout (2021–2025)
• Monica Youn(2025–2026)
  Monica Youn (2026–present)

Past winners

The year column provides the date of the competition. The winning poetry collections are published the following year.

Year	Vol.	Poet	Title	Judge	Ref.
1918	1
	2		Forgotten Shrines
1919	3		Four Gardens
	4		Spires and Poplars
	5
	6		Where Lilith Dances
1920	7		Wild Geese
	8		Horizons
	9		Wampum and Old Gold
	10		Golden Darkness
1921	11		White April
	12		Dreams and a Sword
	13		Hidden Waters
	14		Attitudes
1922	15
	16		Battle-Retrospect
	17		Silver Wands
	18		Mosaics
1923	19		Up and Down
1924	20		Coach into Pumpkin
1925	21		Quest
	22		High Passage
1926	23		Dark Pavilion
1927	24		Twist o' Smoke
	25
	26		This Unchanging Mask
1928	27		Hemlock Wall
	28		Half-Light and Overture
1929	29		Virtuosa
1930	30		Dark Certainty
1931	31		Worn Earth
1932	32
1933	33		Permit Me Voyage
1934	34		Theory of Flight
1935	35
1936	36
1937	37		Letter to a Comrade
1938	38
1939	39		Return Again, Traveler
1940	40
1941	41		For My People
1942	No winner selected
1943	42		Love Letters from an Impossible Land
1944	43		Cut Is the Branch
1945	44		Family Circle
1946	45		Poems
1947	46
1948	47
1949	No winner selected
1950	48
1951	49
1952	50		Various Jangling Keys
1953	51
1954	No winner selected
1955	52		Some Trees
1956	53
1957	54
1958	55		Of the Festivity
1959	56		Bone Thoughts
1960	57		Poems
1961	58		Views of Jeopardy
1962	59		Manhattan Pastures
1963	60		The Breaking of the Day
1964	61		Dream Barker
1965	No winner selected
1966	62
1967	63		Coming Close and Other Poems
1968	64		Uranium Poems
1969	65		Collecting Evidence
1970	66		Lugging Vegetables to Nantucket
1971	67		Obscenities
1972	68		Field Guide
1973	69		Threats Instead of Trees
1974	70		Snow on Snow
1975	71		Gathering the Tribes
1976	72		Beginning with O
1977	73
1978	74		Natural Histories
1979	75		One Way to Reconstruct the Scene
1980	76		Green Soldiers
1981	77		Icehouse Lights
1982	78		Picture Bride
1983	79
1984	80		Navigable Waterways
1985	81		Terms to Be Met
1986	82		Above the Land
1987	83		To the Place of Trumpets
1988	84		Out of the Woods
1989	85		Hermit with Landscape
1990	86		Bears Dancing in the Northern Air
1991	87		Hands of the Saddlemaker
1992	88		Stone Crop
1993	89		Thinking the World Visible
1994	90		Living in the Resurrection
1995	91		Cities of Memory
1996	92		My Shining Archipelago
1997	No winner selected
1998	93		Shells
1999	94		Ultima Thule
2000	95		Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions
2001	96		Discography
2002	97		Famous Americans
2003	98
2004	99		Crush
2005	100		Green Squall
2006	101		Frail-Craft
2007	102		The Earth in the Attic
2008	103		It Is Daylight
2009	104		Juvenilia
2010	105		Radial Symmetry
2011	106		Slow Lightning
2012	107		Westerly
2013	108		Eruv
2014	109		Blue Yodel
2015	110
2016	111		simulacra
2017	112	Duy Doan	We Play a Game
2018	113	Yanyi
2019	114	Jill Osier
2020	115	Desiree C. Bailey	What Noise Against The Cane
2021	116	Robert Wood Lynn	Mothman Apologia
2022	117	Mary-Alice Daniel	Mass for Shut-Ins
2023	118	Cindy Juyoung Ok	Ward Toward
2024	119	John Liles	Bees, and After
2025	120	Isabel Neal	Thrown Voice

See also

• American poetry
• List of poetry awards
• List of literary awards
• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature

External links

• Official website