Bernadette Mayer (2009 Literature) is the winner of the National Poetry Society’s 2014 Shelley Memorial Award. The judges, Ben Doller and Joan Larkin, wrote the following tribute: “For a generation of poets, Bernadette Mayer has stood as a brilliant example of how to live a life in poetry and how to create a poetry out of life. From her early performance-based work in which she explored the lines between memory, documentary, and presence, to her current work which excavates the DNA of the struggling city in which she lives (Troy, NY), Mayer’s writing has always been fiercely, independently ahead of its time. Feminist and expansive—in multiple directions—Mayer’s voice is one that cuts the wind, leads the charge, and always tells the smooth, hard truth. In a massive body of work that juxtaposes the quotidian with the spectacular, the public with the personal, Mayer has emerged as the chief poet of time in our time. Throughout her still-evolving career, Mayer consistently transcends category, genre, and label, carving open space for new forms of writing, thinking, and being. From her early work as the co-founder and editor of the influential 0 to 9 with Vito Acconci, to her deeply collaborative and creative poetry friendships, to her radical investigations into egalitarian pedagogy, Bernadette Mayer is a poet who has given more than she has taken—she has given proliferation back to poetry, and poetry back to art.”
Mayer received the Creative Capital award in 2009 for her project Helen of Troy, The Faces That Launched A Thousand Ships, a series of poems and photographs featuring women named Helen. Her book, The Helens of Troy, New York, was published by New Directions Press in 2013.