Jane Hirshfield, described in The New York Times Magazine as “writing some of the most important poems in the world today,” is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023); two now-classic collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Knopf, 2015); and four books presenting the work of world poets from the deep past.
Among American poetry’s central spokespersons for issues of the biosphere, climate, and interconnection and the founder in 2017 of Poets for Science, a traveling and online interactive project, Hirshfield is also a poet of interior and daily life in all its dimensions. Her honors include the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, Columbia University’s Translation Center Award, finalist listing for the National Book Critics Circle Award and long-listing for the National Book Award. She’s received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, NEA, and Academy of American Poets. In 2024, she was given the Zhongkun International Poet Award, China’s premiere independently-given honor for a world poet, whose previous recipients include Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Adam Zagajewski, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Yves Bonnefoy, and Adonis. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Poetry, and ten editions of The Best American Poems.
A presenter at universities and festivals worldwide, Hirshfield’s work has been translated into eighteen languages. Her TED-ED animated lesson on metaphor has been viewed over 1.5 million times. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she was elected in 2019 into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Photo: © Curt Richter
