Honoring advocacy, inclusion, and service:

The Elizabeth Kray Award

Poets House presents the Elizabeth Kray Award (The Betty) biennially to an individual whose service to the field of poetry embodies the sprit of Elizabeth Kray's work and ideals. In founding Poets House with Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Kray created a place dedicated to poetry and poets. In the words of the late poet Denise Levertov, she was "poetry's patron saint." From her Poets in the Schools program to the shaping of the modern day poetry reading series, Betty Kray was an innovative advocate for a greater presence for poetry in the American cultural landscape.

Elizabeth Kray Award Recipients

1998—Gigi Bradford
Executive Director of the Center for Arts and Culture and formerly Director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts. While at the NEA, Gigi helped to promote the profile of literary organizations. In addition, under her watch, fellowships to writers were saved at the NEA.

Read Gigi Bradford's remarks on receiving the first Elizabeth Kray Award.

2000—James Haba
James Haba has been the Dodge Foundation's poetry program coordinator, and the designer and producer of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival—the nation's largest poetry festival—held bienially in Waterloo Village. Haba is a poet who teaches in the English Department at Rowan University and holds a BA from Reed College and a Ph.D. He has been a special convener for the entire poetry community.

2002—Herb Leibowitz
Herb Leibowitz is the founder, publisher and editor of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, one of the important review venues for poetry. He is the author of the upcoming book, William Carlos Williams: A Critical Biography (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He served as President of the National Book Critics Circle from 1992-94, and is a member of PEN. His published works include The Poetry of Hart Crane: An Introduction (Columbia University Press), Fabricating
Lives: Explorations in American Autobiography (Alfred A. Knopf; New Directions paperback), and, as editor, a collection of love poems by William Carlos Williams and Parnassus: Twenty Years of Poetry in Review.

2004—Robert Bly
Robert Bly is a poet, translator, activist and community builder. Through his passionate commitment to translating the work of poets from around the world—from his groundbreaking Nerurda and Vallejo to his Jacobsen, Rumi and Ghalib—he has helped us to see and hear beyond ourselves and to enter a deeper conversation with the international community. Robert Bly’s most recent book, The Winged Energy of Delight, Selected Translations, is published by HarperCollins. Another book of translations, Kabir: Ecstatic Poems was recently revised and reissued by Beacon Press. His many books of poetry and criticism have helped to shape the parameters for poetic discussion in our time, widening our sense of what poetry can do in the world and the ways in which oral traditions and mythologies, have informed it. The many anthologies he has edited, including News from the Universe, are widely used on college campuses and vigorously welcome a new generation into the discovery of a wide art. He has won two Guggenheim fellowships and the National Book Award.

2006—Bob Holman
Bob Holman's many efforts on behalf of poetry have changed the entire context for spoken word performance in this country. He was instrumental in the reopening of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and was the original slammaster there. He is now the proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club. He is generally credited with bringing the poetry slam to New York City, where he and the New York poets have been responsible for its penetration into the mass media and commercial markets. Holman was one of the founders of Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, with Bill Adler and Sekou Sundiata. The series he produced for PBS, the United States of Poetry, features over sixty poets including Derek Walcott, Rita Dove, Czeslaw Milosz, Lou Reed and former President Jimmy Carter, as well as rappers, cowboy poets, American Sign Language poets, and Slammers. The NEA has announced major preproduction support for his new poetry media project, the World of Poetry worldofpoetry.org, the world’s first digital poetry anthology.

Read Bob Holman's remarks on receiving the 2006 Elizabeth Kray Award.