Arts Beat: For Rhodes professor, pressure wins a poetry prize
Caki Wilkinson, a Rhodes professor, won the 2026 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. (Courtesy Robert Alan Grand)
A Memphis professor has been awarded a national poetry prize she never asked for.
Since its inception in 1987, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, presented by the Sewanee Review, has been given to poets like Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Glück, Billy Collins and Jericho Brown.
This year, it went to Caki Wilkinson, a professor of English and the director of creative writing at Rhodes College.
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Subscriber Only Caki Wilkinson Rhodes College poetry Sewanee: The University of the SouthThank you for reading The Daily Memphian. Your support is critical.
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Kelsey Bowen
Kelsey Bowen is a born-and-bred Memphian with publications in Creative Nonfiction magazine and at the Library of Congress, who occasionally moonlights as a writing teacher. You can usually find her digging around a Summer Avenue antique mall or seated at a Malco movie theater.
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