Drew University Visiting Poet Wins National Award

Afaa Michael Weaver, a visiting faculty member in Drew University’s MFA in poetry and poetry in translation program, has won the prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Weaver recently read at Drew’s Winter Poetry Readings held in January and is teaching and serving as a mentor in Drew’s Caspersen School of Graduate Studies this semester.

Weaver, of Somerville, Mass., won for his book The Government of Nature  (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award is one of the nation’s most lucrative poetry awards and is given annually by Claremont Graduate University to a mid-career poet based on that person’s body of work.

“We are thrilled to learn that Afaa Michael Weaver was awarded the Kingsley Tufts Award,” said Sean Nevin, director of Drew’s MFA program. “Afaa has quickly become a beloved member of our MFA community not only because he is a gifted poet and translator, but also because he is, at his heart, a teacher.

A native of Baltimore, Weaver spent many years as a factory worker while publishing his own poetry through a literary magazine. In 1985, he returned to college and through an arts fellowship, finished his undergraduate degree and an MFA at Brown University. From there, Weaver became a professor at Rutgers University, Camden, earned a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan, was a poet-in-residence at Bucknell University and currently teaches at Simmons College in Boston.

He has published 12 books of poetry and previously won numerous awards, including two Pushcart prizes, NEA and Pew fellowships in poetry and a Fulbright appointment.

Weaver is one of many decorated poets who are part of Drew’s MFA faculty. Others include Gerald Stern, who was awarded The Frost Medal from The Poetry Society of America in January and Geoffrey Brock, winner of The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.

 About Drew University

Drew University is a private, liberal arts university located in Madison, N.J., just 29 miles west of New York City. Ranked among the top liberal arts institutions nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes and Washington Monthly, Drew is also listed in Princeton Review’s Best 378 Colleges. The Drew promise—We Deliver Full-Impact Learning to the World—emphasizes the university’s commitment to borderless education that enables a student’s greatest success in a globally connected world. Drew has a total student enrollment of more than 2,000 in three schools: the College of Liberal Arts, the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies and the Drew Theological School. The undergraduate program offers degrees in 30 different disciplines, while Caspersen and the Theological School offer degrees at the master’s and doctoral levels.