Announcing the 2026 Frost Medalist, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

The Poetry Society of America is pleased to announce that Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the 2026 recipient of the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. Named for Robert Frost, and first given in 1930, the Frost Medal is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in American poetry and is awarded annually at the discretion of the PSA’s Board of Governors. Previous award winners include Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Joy Harjo, and, most recently, Nikki Giovanni.

Born in Beijing, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of fourteen books of poetry, including Hello, the Roses; Empathy; I Love Artists; and A Treatise on Stars, shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her collaborations span theater, dance, music, and the visual arts. She received the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 2020. She received the Mary McCarthy award for engagement in the public sphere in 2022, and her work with George Lewis and The Crossing Choir received a Grammy Award in 2025. She has also received two NEA fellowships, two Asian American Writers' Workshop awards, and two American Book Awards. She has taught at the Institute for American Indian Arts, where she was a founding editor of Tyuonyi magazine. She lives in New Mexico and New York City. 

The Frost Medal citation from the Poetry Society of America’s Board of Governors reads:

For five decades, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge has written poetry with her signature languid long line that pushes language beyond communication into realms of habitation, exposing the complex natures of our inner and external worlds, and maybe the inadequacy of the traditional construct of author speaking to or for a reader. Her collected works expand lyric poetry to include more than a single, human consciousness but permit multiple perceptions, especially regarding the ever-transforming kinship between beings, ecosystems, and our spatial and linguistic landscapes. In this way, she makes known and imagines deep levels of human empathy and spiritual connection. Throughout her prolific writing life, in addition to grand philosophical questions of language, place, and time, Berssenbrugge’s poetry explores an array of subject matter to include science, family, physics, grief, astronomy, the New Mexico landscape, identity, and the continuum between. Influenced by late-20th century multicultural and avant-garde art movements and community, Berssenbrugge’s atmospheric style models experimental play, centers multiplicity and constellation, scientific and spiritual thought, and challenges poetry as a straightforward representation of emotional states. A much revered poet, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s poetry is a vital testament of the rich interplay between the arts, the imagination as an interceding force, and our ability to discern our lives in ways that enrich and allow for further evolution beyond its own making.

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You can read an interview with Berssenbrugge by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone on the Poetry Society of America’s website, from their anthology Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry. You can also listen to a recording of Berssenbrugge reading at the Poetry Society of America's storefront office on September 21, 2023.