Isabel Neal, a poet and teacher from New England, has been named winner of the 2025 Yale Younger Poets award, a prestigious competition that aims to bring greater attention to America’s most promising new poets.
Neal’s winning manuscript, “Thrown Voice,” which was selected by the acclaimed poet Rae Armantrout, will be published by the Yale University Press in April 2026.
Presented by the Yale Press since 1919, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize is America’s longest-running poetry award. The selection of Neal for this year’s prize is the fifth by Armantrout since she became judge of the competition, succeeding Carl Phillips.
Neal has been awarded fellowships from Lighthouse Works, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Vermont Studio Center, among other honors. She lives in Maine.
“When Isabel Neal writes ‘Tide uncovers a bare shoulder of thought/This wide flex/I want to watch all day,’ I believe she does want to and that, in fact, she just may have,” Armantrout said of Neal’s selection. “Patient observation is one of her gifts. Not the only one either. The word choices in these lines are fresh and striking. We probably expect the tide to uncover a sand bank, not a shoulder; and it’s new but appropriate to think of the tide’s comings and goings as a kind of flex. These lines are self-reflexive as well since this is a shoulder of thought she’s describing. She attends to the inner and outer worlds.
“Neal’s work reminds me of [20th century American poet] Lorine Niedecker (a personal favorite) and her poems about Wisconsin,” Armantrout added. “Looking long enough at these landscapes, Neal sees how ‘Just one mink darkens the ice/a live ampersand.’ Her attention to place and to the sound of words have produced gorgeous poems.”
Being named winner of the Yale Younger Prize, Neal said, “has left me so moved and grateful.”
“Reading and sharing in poetry — including many of the books in the Yale Series of Younger Poets — has made my writing possible,” she said. “I am full of wonder that my first book will be included the series, and that it will exist in a physical form next year. ‘Thrown Voice’ came to be with the witness and care of many friends, teachers, and students. I am excited to be able to share this with the people whose company and curiosity have sustained me. And I am honored by the recognition of those at the prize who have believed in my work.”
Previous winners of the Yale Younger Poets award include such noted poets as Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, and Robert Haas. Honorees also receive a writing fellowship offered at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut. The fellowship provides a furnished living space and daily access to the late poet James Merrill’s apartment, allowing the writers a quiet setting to complete projects of literary or academic merit.
The publication of Neal’s book will be the 120th volume in the series. The latest volume, John Liles’ “Bees, and after,” recipient of the 2024 Yale Younger Poets award, was published last month.
