Word weaver: Santa Fe poet Arthur Sze honored with 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry

Arthur Sze has a way with words.

When weaving them together — he makes an impact.

The Santa Fe resident has been nominated for awards in recent years.

His latest honor is the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress — which will be awarded to him at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5, during an event in the Mumford Room of the Library’s James Madison Building.

Sze will also give a short talk on poetry called “Lines of Sight, and Beyond.”

He will braid some of his poems with details about his evolution as a poet, insights about his creative process, and ideas of exploration and freedom in the context of the American experience.

It will be followed by a moderated discussion with Rob Casper, the Library’s head of poetry and literature.

Since moving to Santa Fe, Sze remains a creature of habit. He wakes up hours before the sun rises and heads into his writing studio.

“I have a rhythm of writing,” he said. “I never know what’s going to happen when I start writing. It’s important to be disciplined. Writing as early as I do, it’s kind of a dream time. I’m starting to wake up for the day and all the thoughts are fresh and new.”

The 2024 Bobbitt Prize was awarded for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Librarian of Congress, based on the recommendation of an internal committee, said Brett Zongker, Library of Congress chief of media relations.

“In 11 books and over more than 50 years, Arthur Sze has developed a signature lyricism of seeing. His poems focus on images and declarations — but they also move through breathtaking juxtapositions, create layers of fragments that open up rather than direct their readers,” the committee wrote. “Sze’s imaginative capaciousness pulls in languages, traditions and systems from both East and West, and it can speak to the cosmos then turn to the smallest natural detail.”

Sze is the author of 11 poetry collections, most recently the 2021 “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems,” which received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation.

His other collections include “Sight Lines,” which won the National Book Award for Poetry; “Compass Rose,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and “The Ginkgo Light,” selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award.

Zongker said the biennial Bobbitt Prize, which carries a $10,000 award, recognizes a book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years or the lifetime achievement of an American poet.

Sze was Santa Fe’s first Poet Laureate in 2005. He’s also a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

To this day, Sze continues to work within the hills and valleys of words — always remaining patient in finding a way for them to fit and reside together.

“Sometimes there’s a phrase or seed in the writing that needs time to grow,” he said of his style. “If I give it a little bit of time, I can see the direction. You can’t force writing. As a writer, you know when you’re forcing it.”

Sze, who is Chinese American, has found his home in Santa Fe, as he moved to the area after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley.

“I had never been to New Mexico before,” he said. “I got a job as a poet in the schools. I loved being inside the classroom.”