Announcing the 2019 Frost Medalist, Eleanor Wilner

Photo: Jacques-Jean Tiziou

Eleanor Wilner is the 2019 recipient of the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry presented annually by the Poetry Society of America. Previous winners of the organizations highest award include Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Barbara Guest, Lucille Clifton, Marilyn Nelson, Susan Howe, and, most recently, Ron Padgett.

Eleanor Wilner's latest book Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2017 will be published in Fall 2019 by Princeton University Press; it contains selections from seven books of poems, including the recent Tourist in Hell (University of Chicago Press) and The Girl with Bees in Her Hair (Copper Canyon). Other publications include a translation of Euripides' Medea(University of Pennsylvania Press), a book on visionary imagination as an agent of change, Gathering the Winds (Johns Hopkins University Press), and The Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry: Poems, Poets, Process, co-edited with Maurice Manning (University of Michigan). She has two bi-lingual collections of her poetry in Italian, Voci Dal Labirinto, translated by Eleonora Chiavetta, and Tutto ricomincia, edited by Fiorenza Mormile.

Wilner's poems have appeared in over fifty anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2014 and 2016. Her awards include fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Juniper Prize, and three Pushcart Prizes. She has an interdepartmental Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, is a former editor of the American Poetry Review and is an advisory editor to Calyx. She has taught peripatetically at various colleges and universities, and perennially in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a lifelong activist for civil rights and peace.

The 2019 Annual Awards ceremony, which will honor Eleanor Wilner and celebrate the winners of the Poetry Society of America's annual awards will take place on Thursday, April 18th, 2019 at The National Arts Club in New York City.

The Poetry Society of America, the nation's oldest poetry organization, was founded in 1910 for the purpose of creating a public forum for the advancement, enjoyment, and understanding of poetry. Through a diverse array of programs, initiatives, contests, and awards, the PSA works to build a larger audience for poetry, to encourage a deeper appreciation of the art, and to place poetry at the crossroads of American life. The PSA's signature program is Poetry in Motion, featuring poems on transit systems across the country.