Claremont Graduate University is pleased to announce the selection of Vievee Francis as the recipient of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her poetry collection Forest Primeval (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press).

The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given annually for a book by a mid-career poet, comes with a $100,000 purse; the winning poet also will spend a week-in-residence at Claremont Graduate University.

According to 2017 Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards Judge Don Share, Francis’s Forest Primeval is “an intense work, dark … Dantean … dreamlike in its visions.”

The 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award winner is Phillip B. Williams was chosen for his volume Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books). The Kate Tufts Discovery award is given to an emerging poet for their first volume of poetry and is accompanied by $10,000.

Read the full press release at CGU’s website, and save the date for the 25th Anniversary Poetry Reading and Awards Ceremony: Thursday, April 20th, 2017. We invite you to join us, in partnership with ALOUD and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, in honoring and celebrating these fine poets.