The Editors of The New Criterion are pleased to announce that David Lehman is the winner of the twenty-fifth New Criterion Poetry Prize. Mr. Lehman will receive $3,000, and his collection Ithaca will be published by Criterion Books in the winter of 2026.
Established in 2000, the New Criterion Poetry Prize is awarded each year to a book-length manuscript of poems that pay close attention to form. This year’s judges were Editor & Publisher Roger Kimball, Poetry Editor Adam Kirsch, and the poet Peter Filkins. Previous winners of the prize can be found for sale here.
David Lehman is the author of numerous books of poetry, nonfiction, and literary criticism, and the founder and series editor of The Best American Poetry. His recent works include The Morning Line (University of Pittsburgh), New and Selected Poems (Scribner), Yeshiva Boys (Scribner), and The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir (Cornell University). He resides in New York.
The submission window for the twenty-sixth New Criterion Poetry Prize will open in the winter of 2025.
