2006 Lilly Prize Awarded to Poet Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur has won the 2006 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the largest and most prestigious awards bestowed on American poets.

Established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly and administered by the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, the annual prize of $100,000 honors a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition. The latest recipient was designated the Poet Laureate of the United States (1987), and has received two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Translation Prize. "No contemporary poet has brought so much lived experience into such formally perfect poems as Richard Wilbur," said foundation president John Barr.

Wilbur, who will officially receive the prize at a ceremony in Chicago on May 25, has taught at Harvard, Wellesley, and Wesleyan universities, and has been writer-in-residence at Smith College. He has published more than two dozen poems in Poetry magazine, translations of classic French drama, and several books for children. Born in New York City in 1921, raised on a farm in New Jersey, and educated at Amherst and Harvard, he lives in Massachusetts with his wife.

"If you had to put all your money on one living poet whose work will be read in a hundred years, Richard Wilbur would be a good bet," said Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry and chair of the selection committee. "He has written some of the most memorable poems of our time, and his achievement rivals that of great American poets like Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop."

"Richard Wilbur Wins 2006 Lilly Prize." Poetry Foundation Press Release 4/18/06.