Poetry Society of America

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The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets including Witter Bynner. Past members of the Society have included such renowned writers as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens. Current members include John Ashbery, Louise Glück, Rita Dove, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, and James Tate.

In 1915 the Society began conferring awards honoring innovation and mastery of the form by emerging and established American poets. Over the past 90 years, the recipients have included John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, Lucille Clifton, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and Pinsky. In 1930 the Society began awarding the Frost Medal for lifetime achievement in American poetry, and in the same year began awarding the Shelley 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.

[edit] Awards given by the society

Frost Medal
Shelley Memorial Award — since 1929, offered by the society to a poet living in the United States who is chosen on the basis of "genius and need."
Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award
Cecil Hemley Memorial Award
Lyric Poetry Award
Lucille Medwick Memorial Award
Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award
Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award
George Bogin Memorial Award
Roberth H. Winner Memorial Award
Norma Farber First Book Award
William Carlos Williams Award — offered by the society for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit, or university press