The American Poetry Review is proud to announce the first winner of The Stern Prize, Michael Bazzett,  for his collection Cloudwatcher. His book will be published in December, 2025, with distribution through Copper Canyon Press. 

 

Michael Bazzett is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently The Echo Chamber (Milkweed Editions, 2021) — as well as a verse translation of the creation epic of the Maya, The Popol Vuh (Milkweed, 2018), named by the NY Times as one of the best poetry books of 2018. His translation of the selected poems of Humberto Ak'abal, If Today Were Tomorrow, was published by Milkweed in 2024, and his chapbook, They: A Field Guide, was the editors' choice for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize (Factory Hollow, 2024). The recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in both poetry and translation, his poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, GRANTA, The Nation, The Paris Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Review, and The Sun.