Beloved IAIA Prof Arthur Sze Named 2025-26 U.S. Poet Laureate

The Library of Congress announced the appointment of Arthur Sze as the nation’s 25th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2025-2026 on Sept. 15. The winner of the Library’s 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Sze will begin his laureateship with a reading of his work on Thursday, Oct. 9, in the Library’s historic Coolidge Auditorium, and free tickets will be available on loc.gov starting Sept. 18. During his term as Poet Laureate, Sze, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, plans to have a special focus on translating poetry originally written in other languages.

“Last fall the Library of Congress honored Arthur Sze with our Bobbitt Prize, for lifetime achievement in poetry; this fall we are thrilled to bring him back to the Library as the nation’s poet laureate,” said Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Randolph Newlen. “His poetry is distinctly American in its focus on the landscapes of the Southwest, where he has lived for many years, as well as in its great formal innovation. Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences – and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space.”

A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2012–2017) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sze joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Ada Limón, who recently completed a two-year second term, as well as Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, Charles Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.

“What an amazing honor to be named the 25^th Poet Laureate of the United States. As the son of Chinese immigrants, and as a sophomore who decided to leave MIT to pursue a dream of becoming a poet, I never would have guessed that so many decades later I would receive this recognition,” Sze said. “It’s a recognition that belongs to teachers, librarians, editors, poets, readers – everyone who works tirelessly on behalf of poetry. As laureate I feel a great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives. We live in such a fast-paced world: poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully.”

Arthur Sze was born in New York City in 1950 to Chinese immigrants. He is the author of 12 poetry collections, most recently “Into the Hush” (2025), as well as the prose collection “The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems” (2025). His other poetry collections include “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems” (2021), which received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation; “Sight Lines” (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; “Compass Rose” (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; “The Ginkgo Light” (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; “The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998” (1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and “Archipelago “(1995), selected for an American Book Award. Sze has also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, “The Silk Dragon II” (2024).

In addition to the Bobbitt Prize, Sze’s honors include the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from Yale University, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. from the U.S. Library of Congress website  loc.gov/poetry  Photo: Steven Miller

About the Laureateship The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry position has existed since 1937, when Archer M. Huntington endowed the Chair of Poetry at the Library of Congress. Since then, many of the nation’s most eminent poets have served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the passage of Public Law 99-194 (Dec. 20, 1985), as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry — a position which the law states “is equivalent to that of Poet Laureate of the United States.” During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. The Library keeps to a minimum the specific duties required of the Poet Laureate, who opens the literary season in the fall and closes it in the spring. In recent years, laureates have initiated poetry projects that broaden the audiences for poetry. The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on site and online.