Skip to main content

Duke Poet Nathaniel Mackey Wins Prestigious Bollingen Prize

Nathaniel Mackey has been awarded Yale University’s 2015 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, awarded biennially for the best book in American poetry published in the previous two years. Previous winners include such luminaries of American poetry as Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore.

The award is the latest in a string of honors for Mackey, the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke.  Mackey has also received a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2014 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, among other honors. He served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007.

Mackey has written numerous books of poetry, including the National Book Award-winning collection “Splay Anthem.” His most recent book is the 2014 volume “Outer Pradesh.” He is coeditor, with Art Lange, of the anthology “Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose” and editor of the distinguished literary magazine, Hambone.