Twin Cities poet Danez Smith has won the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection, becoming at 29 the youngest poet ever to win. Smith, who is published by Minneapolis' Graywolf Press, was up against U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, also a Graywolf poet, and three others.
Smith's prize carries a 10,000 pound ($13,000) award.
Smith's book, "Don't Call Us Dead," was also a finalist for last year's National Book Award for poetry. And earlier this year, Smith won the inaugural Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T.S. Eliot Foundation. That award, for "summer, somewhere," a sequence of poems from "Don't Call Us Dead," comes with a $20,000 prize. It is given annually for award is given annually for a unified and complete sequence of poems.
