Four Quartets Prize
The Four Quartets Prize is an award of the Poetry Society of America, presented annually since 2018 in partnership with the T.S. Eliot Foundation. It is "first and foremost a celebration of the multi-part poem, which includes entire volumes composed of a unified sequence as well as novels in verse and book-length verse narratives."
Background
The awards are named for T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, originally written over a four-year period. The award recognizes the 75th anniversary of Eliot's New York publisher first collecting them in a single volume in 1943.Eligibility
The prize is awarded for a unified and complete sequence of poems. Examples of existing sequences that would fit the category:- Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville or The Anniad
- John Berryman, 77 Dream Poems or His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
The Four Quartets Prize was first presented in 2018 to Danez Smith for their sonnet "summer, somewhere."
Four Quartets winners and finalists
Winners are listed first, highlighted and with a double dagger.| Year | Poet | Work |
| 2019 | 'Dante Micheaux | The Circus |
| 2019 | Catherine Barnett | "Accursed Questions" from Human Hours |
| 2019 | Meredith Stricker | anemochore |
| 2018 | 'Danez Smith | "summer, somewhere" from Don't Call Us Dead |
| 2018 | Geoffrey G. O'Brien | "Experience in Groups" from Experience in Groups |
| 2018 | Kathleen Peirce | Vault: a poem |