Cyrus Cassells (Credit: Eyoel Kahssay)
The Jackson Poetry Prize honors an American poet of exceptional talent. It was established in 2006 with a gift from the Liana Foundation and is named for the John and Susan Jackson family. Eligible poets must have published at least two books of acknowledged literary merit. The 2025 prize carries a monetary value of $100,000. Nominees are identified by a group of poets selected by Poets & Writers who remain anonymous; final selection is made by a panel of esteemed poets.
The 2025 Jackson Poetry Prize recipient is Cyrus Cassells. Esteemed poets James Richardson, Patricia Spears Jones, and Chase Twichell served as judges.
In selecting Cyrus Cassells as the nineteenth recipient of the prize, the judges issued the following citation:
Cyrus Cassells is the most cosmopolitan of poets. His concerns and concepts range over both history and place—from the courage of Black students integrating Little Rock’s Central High to memories of Holocaust survivors and discovering the power of duende in the Catalan poets. Cassells is an African American poet at home in a larger world, observing political violence and sensuous experience with deep humanity. In a Cassells poem, brutality can be conjured with formal elegance, and an erotic encounter can leave a scar of sadness. Painterly, precise, simultaneously strange and utterly familiar, his imagery is indelible. His language is inventive and delicate, jolting the reader by pairing words that seem never before to have been used in the same line: “coal-dark and stillborn grapes,” “the choir of cliffs,” “a hurrah/ of wheeling blackbirds,” “premonitory wheat.” In a world that is increasingly unstable, the brave compassion of these poems, both profound and hard won, is a rare and precious thing. They’re intimate with pain, yes, with betrayal, racism, and cruelty, and they also show us how to recognize and protect the glimmers of hope that survive.
Read the 2025 Press Release.
To purchase books by Cyrus Cassells as well as past winners of the Jackson Poetry Prize, visit Bookshop.org.
Past Winners of the Jackson Poetry Prize
2024 - Fady Joudah
Judges: Natalie Diaz, Gregory Pardlo, and Diane Seuss
2023 - Sandra Lim
Judges: Joy Harjo, Carl Phillips, and John Yau
2022 - Sonia Sanchez
Judges: Mary Jo Bang, Marilyn Chin, and Claudia Rankine
2021 - Carl Phillips
Judges: Jericho Brown, Carolyn Forché, and Juan Felipe Herrera
2020 - Ed Roberson
Judges: Nikky Finney, Anne Waldman, and Robert Wrigley
2019 - Joy Harjo
Judges: Ada Limón, Alicia Ostriker, and D. A. Powell
2018 - John Yau
Judges: Laura Kasischke, Robin Coste Lewis, and Arthur Sze
2017 - Patricia Spears Jones
Judges: Henri Cole, Kwame Dawes, and Mary Szybist
2016 - Will Alexander
Judges: Elizabeth Alexander, Rae Armantrout, and Terrance Hayes
2015 - X. J. Kennedy
Judges: Heather McHugh, Vijay Seshadri, and Rosanna Warren
2014 - Claudia Rankine
Judges: Tracy K. Smith, David St. John, and Mark Strand
2013 - Arthur Sze
Judges: Reginald Gibbons, Natasha Trethewey, and C. D. Wright
2012 - Henri Cole
Judges: Louise Glück, Marilyn Hacker, and James Tate
2011 - James Richardson
Judges: Mark Doty, Rita Dove, and Gerald Stern
2010 - Harryette Mullen
Judges: Fanny Howe, Ted Kooser, and C. K. Williams
2009 - Linda Gregg
Judges: Brenda Hillman, Edward Hirsch, and Charles Simic
2008 - Tony Hoagland
Judges: Philip Levine, Robert Pinsky, and Ellen Bryant Voigt
2007 - Elizabeth Alexander
Judges: Lucille Clifton, Stephen Dunn, and Jane Hirshfield