Poet David Rivard recently won the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2006 O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. Rivard, whose most recent collection is Sugartown (Graywolf Press, 2006), received $10,000 and an invitation to read at the library in Washington, D.C. The judges were Sarah Kennedy, Campbell McGrath, and Tom Sleigh.
Founded in 1991 in honor of O. B. Hardison Jr., a poet, teacher, and essayist who taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the prize is given to recognize a U.S. poet “whose art and teaching demonstrate a spirit of inquiry, imagination, daring, and scholarship.”
Past recipients include Frank Bidart, Cornelius Eady, Jorie Graham, and David St. John.
