ARTS News:

U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze will open his tenure in December with a workshop and reading focused on poetry translation at Queens College of the City University of New York, in the borough where he grew up, followed by his inaugural reading at the Library of Congress on Dec. 11 (rescheduled from October) and two poetry translation workshops in Sze’s hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in early January.

Sze plans to engage with students and the public in a series of readings and workshops focused on translating poetry originally written in other languages during his laureateship. Translation is an important way Sze learned to write poetry, he has said. Queens College, located where poet Walt Whitman once taught in a one-room school house, offers an MFA in creative writing and literary translation. The borough is also known as one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.

The opening events of Sze’s laureateship include:

• Dec. 8 — Translation workshop for students at Queens College.
• Dec. 8, 7 p.m. ET — “Words Bridging Worlds: On Poetry and Translation,” a public reading at Queen’s College in the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library with Kimiko Hahn, the New York State Poet Laureate. Register for tickets. The event will be livestreamed at this link.
• Dec. 11, 7 p.m. ET — Inaugural Reading at the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium. Register for tickets.
• Jan. 7, 10 a.m. MT — Translation Craft Talk and Workshop with students at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
• Jan. 7, 5 p.m. MT — “Words Bridging Worlds: On Poetry and Translation,” a Community Workshop at the Collected Works Bookstore, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Apply for the workshop.

“Translation practice is a vehicle to develop our own poetry; and to write poetry, with its sonnets and sestinas, its haikus and ghazals all carried over into English from other languages, is to awaken to the possibilities – and expand the resources – of our shared language,” Sze said. “Translation builds bridges and makes connections. The more we give, the more everyone has. Great poetry ignites and reignites our shared humanity, and the transient worlds of poetry in translation play a vital role in bringing us together.”

Arthur Sze was born in New York City in 1950 to Chinese immigrants. He is the author of 12 poetry collections, most recently “Into the Hush” (2025), as well as the prose collection “The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems” (2025). His other poetry collections include “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems” (2021), which received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation; “Sight Lines” (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; “Compass Rose” (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; “The Ginkgo Light” (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; “The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998” (1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and “Archipelago “(1995), selected for an American Book Award. Sze has also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, “The Silk Dragon II” (2024).

Sze’s honors include the Library of Congress’ 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from Yale University, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2012–2017) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, the poet Carol Moldaw, where he served as the city’s first poet laureate.

About the Laureateship

The Library of Congress Literary Initiatives Office is the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed since 1937 when Archer M. Huntington endowed the Chair of Poetry at the Library. Since then, many of the nation’s most eminent poets have served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the passage of Public Law 99-194 (Dec. 20, 1985), as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry — a position that the law states “is equivalent to that of Poet Laureate of the United States.”

During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. In recent years, laureates have initiated poetry projects that broaden the audiences for poetry.

Sze joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Ada Limón, who recently completed a two-year second term, as well as Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, Charles Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.

For more information on the Poet Laureate and the Literary Initiatives Office, visit loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/. Consultants in Poetry and Poets Laureate Consultants in Poetry and their terms of service can be found at loc.gov/poetry/laureate-2011-present.html. To learn more about Poet Laureate projects, visit loc.gov/poetry/laureate-projects.html.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov, and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.