We begin the week with a look at the latest award for the poet Rita Dove and the Japanese Scroll that has become the most recent addition to the Hamilton Library.
Honorary National Book Award Medal for Lifetime Achievement for Rita Dove
The National Book Foundation, which is a non-profit organization, has announced that this year, the winner of their medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters has been awarded to Rita Dove. The poet has been publishing poetry for 50 years and is a Pulitzer Prize winner. She is known in particular for her poetry; however, she is also a published author of novels and short fiction and is currently working on a memoir.
The award ceremony itself is scheduled to take place on 15th November in Manhattan. In addition to the prize for Dove and her considerable contributions to the written word, there will be an additional five prizes that will be awarded. These are for non-fiction, fiction, translation, poetry and young people’s literature. There will also be a Literarian Award for the longtime buyer of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, the company that was co-founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti who was the inaugural prize winner in 2005.
Dove has had an illustrious career and has excelled both in an academic and professional capacity over the years. She was named a Presidential Scholar during her time in high school, and she has a master’s from the University of Iowa. When she was in her early 40s, she became not only the youngest person at the time to be appointed to the position of US poet laureate but also the first Black writer to be appointed to the position.
In addition to her Pulitzer Prize, she has also received many other awards over the course of her lengthy career, including a National Medal of Arts, A National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress and also a gold medal for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She also holds a number of honorary doctorates.
Dove has been quoted over the years as saying that her work influences range from the works of Shakespeare to those of William Blake. Her subjects include the likes of Rosa Parks and her own grandmother.
Rare Medieval Japanese Poetry Scroll Housed in Hamilton Library
Scholars from one of the top humanities research institutes in Japan, the National Institute for Japanese Literature and the Honolulu Museum of Art, marked a 7 year long partnership in August. They also welcomed the latest resource to the library in Hamilton Library. The Kansubon, or scroll, dates back to the 16th century and is believed to have been created between 1500 and 1550. It was handwritten by Asukai Yoritaka, a Japanese poet. The poetry scroll is considered to be a treasure as a result of the whimsical use of auxiliary verbs that it contains mixed into the phrases on it.
The poems of Yoritaka form a part of the curriculum that is taught at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, in the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department. The department worked closely with the Library in order to arrange for this latest resource to join their collection.
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