The Library of Congress has announced Arthur Sze as the 25th U.S. poet laureate. Sze has had a decades-long career as a poet, with his work often drawing inspiration from philosophy, science and nature. He's also an editor and translator of poetry. Sze will start on Oct. 9, taking over from Ada Limón.
The job of the poet laureate is to promote the reading of poetry, and different laureates choose different fields and avenues. In the announcement, Sze says he intends to focus on promoting translated poetry. "As laureate I feel a great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives," he wrote in the announcement. "We live in such a fast-paced world: poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully."
Sze, born in New York City, is a child of Chinese immigrants. He studied math and science at MIT in 1968. But in a 1998 interview with WHYY's Fresh Air, he said he found himself "totally bored" in a classroom and found himself writing all the time instead. So he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley to study poetry. Since then, he's written 12 poetry collections, including 2025's Into the Hush.
In 2006, Sze became the poet laureate of Santa Fe, where he's lived for a long time. In 2015, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And in 2019, he won the National Book Award for his collection Sight Lines.
In the announcement, acting Librarian of Congress Robert R. Newlen praised Sze's poetry as "distinctly American" in how he portrayed the Southwest. "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."
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