Former Iowa Writers’ Workshop professor, poet wins 2025 Paul Engle Prize from Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature

CORALVILLE — In an increasingly insular world, a former Iowa Writers’ Workshop professor is being recognized for a lifetime of work that transcends literary boundaries.

Cole Swensen, who received the 14th Paul Engle Prize on Nov. 16, is a poet, editor and translator who taught students in Iowa from 2001 to 2012.

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It takes all types of literary workers to make the world go ‘round in literature. This year, the Paul Engle Prize recognizes not just an author or a poet, but the impact of background work that often goes unthanked.

In her career, she has written 20 collections of poetry like “Art in Time,” “Gravesend,” a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry, and “Try,” a winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her translations from French to English have spanned more than 30 volumes of poetry, prose, creative non-fiction and art criticism.

After leaving Iowa, Swensen taught at Brown University until her 2023 retirement.

Inspired by Paul Engle’s model of literary citizenship, Swensen’s work in translation, teaching and program facilitation is what elevated her nomination for the prize.

“(That is) a term that has gained more and more traction in the past several years, transforming the cliché of the writer as an isolated artist into a much more accurate map of the interactive work that brings literature about — work done by writers, yes, but writers who are also editors, publishers, teachers, translators, critics, reviewers, and nonprofit participants, among many other things,” she said. “When writers themselves are doing the editing and publishing, we have more deeply informed, less commercially motivated, and more democratic networks creating our literature.”

The impact of Iowa

After Swensen’s book “Try” won the Iowa Poetry Prize in 2000, she was invited to the University of Iowa to guest teach for a semester. Though Paul Engle had been gone for 10 years before Swensen arrived to Iowa, she said his influence was still palpable.

But more than an inspiration, Engle’s legacy lived on by driving a sense of community that survives time and its challenges.

“Paul Engle taught hundreds and hundreds of students, and others, that literature is not just written but also sculpted by collaborative interactions that underscore writing as a basis for community,” Swensen said.

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She spent her time in Iowa and elsewhere teaching an emphasis in book arts and ekphrasis, a literary device that uses detailed descriptions of visual art.

“One of the things I was doing was talking about how writing can help us see things that aren’t usually considered fine art as fine art,” she explained.

Later in life, the camaraderie and joy she found through a sense of community with peers in Iowa gave her the momentum to carry her through other parts of her career.

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She also credits the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for its impact across the world — a value that holds special importance to the translator of works like “Island of the Dead” by Jean Frémon and “And the Street” by Pierre Alferi.

“Just thinking about literature as an international force, it is a force that can erode legal but also mental boundaries,” she said. “Literature is a way of keeping issues of ethics, morality and philosophy available and circulating in the populations in a way that’s accessible to a huge portion of the population. When we lose literature, we lose that ethical conversation.”

The rate of literature translated in the United States is significantly lower than literature from other countries, particularly in Europe.

Her work

Through 20 collections of poetry, Swensen has specialized in writing about landscapes, parks, gardens and public land use.

Through a focus on elements of the ecosphere like birds, animals and plants, for example, she believes language is an exploratory tool.

“I almost always write about something … as a mode of research, as a mode of exploring something in the world. I do not think of poetry, as did (William) Wordsworth, as a spontaneous outpouring of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility,” Swensen said. “Instead, I start not by anything inside of me but by looking out at the world and using language as a way of penetrating the world in a more complex way.”

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As climate change and political inaction on it threatens the environment, she has no illusions that poetry can disrupt gridlock.

“What it can do is be part of the consciousness, part of the various forces that keep this subject highly visible,” she said. “We hear about it on the news, in novels, in popular music, and I think it really helps people who are … not themselves convinced.”

The Paul Engle Prize

The Paul Engle Prize, established in 2011, honors people who, like Paul Engle, represent a pioneering spirit in literature through writing, editing, publishing or teaching. It elevates those whose active participation in “larger issues of the day” contributed to bettering the world through literary arts.

The prize includes a $25,000 award and a one-of-a-kind art piece created by M.C. Ginsberg in Iowa City. This year’s piece, crafted to reflect the work of its recipient and ties to the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature, resembles a scroll.

Paul Engle, who died at age 82 in 1991, is best remembered as the longtime director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and cofounder of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program with his wife, Hualing Nieh Engle. He was a well-regarded poet, playwright, essayist, editor and critic. In 2000, then-Gov. Tom Vilsack declared Engle’s birthday, Oct. 12, as “Paul Engle Day” in Iowa.

Past winners of the prize include James Alan McPherson, the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction writing; Roxane Gay, author of New York Times bestselling essay collection “Bad Feminist”; and Toi Derricotte, winner of the 2020 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.

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For more information about the Paul Engle Prize and past winners, visit iowacityofliterature.org/paul-engle-day.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.