The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation (USA) has this year been awarded to Gary Snyder.

Snyder's poetry collections include Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, The Back Country, Regarding Wave, No Nature, Mountains and Rivers Without End and Danger on Peaks.

His essays are collected in Earth House Hold, The Real Work, A Place in Space and Back on the Fire. A member of the Beat movement, Snyder lived in Japan and studied formally in a Zen monastery for most of the 1960s.

The $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honors a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.

Established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly, the Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and is one of the largest literary honors for work in the English language.