Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham (born May 9, 1950) is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1996) for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 and was chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003.

Books and awards

Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including notable volumes like The End of Beauty, The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, and P L A C E. She has also edited two anthologies, Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language (1996) and The Best American Poetry 1990. She is widely anthologized and her poetry is the subject of many essays, including Jorie Graham: Essays on the Poetry (2005). The Poetry Foundation considers Graham's third book, The End of Beauty (1987), to have been a "watershed" book in which Graham first used the longer verse line for which she is best known. Graham's many honors include a Whiting Award (1985), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Fellowship, and The Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her collection of poetry P L A C E won the 2012 Forward Poetry Prize for best collection, becoming the first American woman ever to win one of the UK's most prestigious poetry accolades.P L A C E was also shortlisted for the 2012 T S Eliot Prize. In 2013, Graham became only the third American to win the International Nonino Prize. In 2015, From the New World: Selected Poems 1976-2014--a collection from all prior eleven volumes plus new work--was published by HarperCollins/Ecco Press.