Poet A. Van Jordan has been selected as the latest recipient of the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize awarded by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University.
The Holmes National Poetry Prize was established in memory of Princeton 1951 alumnus Theodore H. Holmes and is presented each year to a poet of special merit as selected by the faculty of the Program in Creative Writing, which includes writers Katie Farris, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Jamil Jan Kochai, Yiyun Li, Patricia Smith, Lloyd Suh, and Kirstin Valdez Quade. The award, currently carrying a prize of $5,000, was first made to Mark Doty in 2011 and has since also been awarded to Mahogany Browne, Franny Choi, Eduardo Corral, Natalie Diaz, Maya Marshall, Hannah Sanghee Park, Matt Rasmussen, Solmaz Sharif, Evie Shockley, and Jenny Xie.
A. Van Jordan, recipient of the 2026 Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing. Photo credit: Do Pham
Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry, including Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics (2007); and The Cineaste, (W.W. Norton & Co 2013). Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), a United States Artists Fellowship (2009), and a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry (2015). His latest collection, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again, winner of the 2024 Hurston Wright Legacy Award and a finalist for the 2024 Rilke Prize, was released in 2023 (W.W. Norton & Co). Among his many academic appointments, he most recently served as the Robert Hayden Collegiate Professor of English Literature at The University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Stanford University, where he currently holds the Humanities and Sciences Chair in English Literature, and where he also serves as part of the inaugural faculty in the Department of African and African American Studies.
“A. Van Jordan is one of those rare poets whose work changes the way you see,” said Ilya Kaminsky, director of the Program in Creative Writing. “He has a way of making the world feel larger, stranger, and more alive. Open any of his books and you enter a mind that is endlessly curious, one that holds public injustice and private joy in the same field of vision. These poems sing, but they also think. The lines move with the confidence of a gifted maker and the excitement of someone discovering, at every turn, what else language might do.”
Kaminskly adds, “Jordan isn’t the kind of poet who lingers before the mirror. His poems ask us to look outward—to the world around us, the time before us, the culture we have made and the culture we have misplaced. Then he gives the world back to us, and, in the process, sharpens our sight. It is a pleasure and a privilege to celebrate A. Van Jordan with this year’s Theodore H. Holmes’51 and Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize.”
“I think in our field of the arts, more than many others, it’s a real gift to be recognized by your peers,” said Jordan. “We spend so much time in our own hearts and in our own minds, not knowing if the work is resonating with others. You hope someone is listening, but you have to keep reaching out whether you get a response or not. So, this award is very encouraging to me, knowing writers whose work I deeply respect have recognized the effort, my attempt to say something, in mine.”
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Program in Creative Writing and the Lewis Center for the Arts.
