An American Poet Wins the Dylan Thomas Prize — and the Question It Leaves Behind
In March, when the Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist was announced, it felt like a useful reminder — perhaps unnecessary, but useful — that the prize still exists, still selects with genuine seriousness. And now, some weeks later, we have a winner: the American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney, who takes home the £30,000 award for the best published literary work in English by a writer under forty.
I confess I know less about Debevec-McKenney's work than I would like. But perhaps that is partly the point of a prize like this. Named after a poet whose particular music — that Celtic fog of vowels, those hard Welsh consonants, the rhythms that feel both ancient and reckless — remains untranslatable and yet utterly available, the Dylan Thomas Prize has always tried to stretch beyond its founding name. It goes to writers under forty, working in fiction, poetry, or drama. This year, it goes to an American. Dylan Thomas, who once wrote that poetry is «not the most important thing in life — I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets», might have found that diverting.
The more interesting question is what this win says about the present state of American poetry. A decade ago, the prize tended toward British novelists. The shift toward poetry — and toward non-British writers — suggests either that the judges are reading more broadly, or that the form is genuinely experiencing something. My instinct, formed from years of watching literary prizes from a slight remove — which is perhaps the right distance — is that both are true.
Literary prizes have always been at least partly about where the energy is. And the energy in English-language poetry right now is difficult to pin down precisely because it is coming from so many places at once: from American academic traditions and from the margins of those traditions, from the diaspora, from performance, from forms that have no obvious name yet. Debevec-McKenney's win is one data point in that landscape, not a verdict on it.
Dylan Thomas's own collected work remains the best argument for why his name belongs on a literary prize. Not because his life was admirable — it was not, famously — but because the poems ask things of language that very few writers have ever asked. Whether Debevec-McKenney's poetry shares that quality of demand, I cannot yet say with confidence. I look forward to the reading.
