Arts & Humanities

Craig Arnold Named Yale Younger Poet by W.S. Merwin

Yale University Press has announced a winner in the 1998 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. The judge, distinguished poet W.S. Merwin, chose Craig Arnold’s manuscript, “Shells,” which Yale University Press will publish in the spring of 1999.
2 min read

Yale University Press has announced a winner in the 1998 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. The judge, distinguished poet W.S. Merwin, chose Craig Arnold’s manuscript, “Shells,” which Yale University Press will publish in the spring of 1999.

Arnold was born in 1967. He received a B.A. degree in 1989 from Yale, where he studied with poets John Hollander and J. D. McClatchy. He later moved to Salt Lake City to pursue a doctorate in creative writing at the University of Utah under the tutelage of Mark Strand, Donald Revell and Jacqueline Osherow. Arnold, who has served as an editor at Quarterly West magazine, received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship in 1996. His poem “Hot” will be featured in The Best American Poetry 1998. Other work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, The New Republic, New Letters and Hayden’s Ferry Review. A vocalist and songwriter, Arnold has produced one album with his band, Iris. He lives in Salt Lake City.

W.S. Merwin is the first Yale Younger Poet (“Mask for Janus,” 1951) to judge the competition. Arnold is Merwin’s first selection.

In April 1998, Yale University Press published “The Yale Younger Poets Anthology,” edited by George Bradley (Yale Younger Poet 1986). The anthology, featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Public Interest” as well as in The Atlantic Monthly, has been a commercial and critical success.

The Yale Series of Younger Poets is the longest-running poetry prize in America, and is widely considered one of the most prestigious. Since its inception in 1919, the series has published the first books of poetry by such talents as Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery and Robert Hass. Every year, Yale University Press receives more than 600 manuscripts from poets competing for the honor.

Former judges of the competition include Archibald MacLeish, W.H. Auden, Stanley Kunitz, James Merrill and James Dickey.

The annual Yale Younger Poets contest is open to any American under 40 years old who has not yet published a book of poetry. Yale University Press publishes the winning manuscript in the year following its selection. For rules of the competition, visit the website at www.yale.edu/yup/ or send a self addressed, stamped envelope to the Editor, Yale Series of Younger Poets, Yale University Press, P.O. Box 209040, New Haven CT 06520-9040.