Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Randolph Newlen today named Arthur Sze as the new U.S. poet laureate. He succeeds Ada Limón, who has held the position since 2022. The winner of the Library of Congress’s 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Sze will begin his laureateship with a reading on October 9. During his term as poet laureate, Sze, who lives in Santa Fe, plans to have a special focus on poetry in translation.
U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze (Credit: Shawn Miller / Library of Congress)
Born in New York City in 1950 to Chinese immigrants, Sze is the author of twelve poetry collections, most recently Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), as well as the prose collection The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2025). His other poetry collections include The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), which received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation; Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; and Compass Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
“Last fall the Library of Congress honored Arthur Sze with our Bobbitt Prize, for lifetime achievement in poetry; this fall we are thrilled to bring him back to the Library as the nation’s poet laureate,” says Newlen. “His poetry is distinctly American in its focus on the landscapes of the Southwest, where he has lived for many years, as well as in its great formal innovation. Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences—and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space.”
In addition to the Bobbitt Prize, Sze’s honors include the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from Yale University, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Lannan Literary Award and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.
Poets who have previously served in the U.S. poet laureate position include Ada Limón, who recently completed a two-year second term, Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, Charles Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, and Rita Dove.
“What an amazing honor to be named the twenty-fifth poet laureate of the United States. As the son of Chinese immigrants, and as a sophomore who decided to leave MIT to pursue a dream of becoming a poet, I never would have guessed that so many decades later I would receive this recognition,” Sze says. “It’s a recognition that belongs to teachers, librarians, editors, poets, readers—everyone who works tirelessly on behalf of poetry. As laureate I feel a great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives. We live in such a fast-paced world: Poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully.”
thumbnail credit: Shawn Miller / Library of Congress
