Post by University of California, Berkeley

“If I control everything, the poem is dead. The poem should shape me as I shape it.” UC Berkeley alum Arthur Sze (BA ’72, Individualized Major in Poetry) is the 25th U.S. Poet Laureate — and the first Asian American to hold this position. He began writing seriously on campus, drafting poems on a typewriter in a small building near a eucalyptus-lined creek. At Berkeley, he learned to trust attention, sound, and the natural world in his work. It was also where Sze found life-changing mentors like English professor Josephine Miles. After an overcrowded workshop left him needing more, Miles simply said, “Come to my house for tea, and I’ll go over your poems.” Those collaborative sessions later led her to sponsor his individualized major in poetry. A translation apprenticeship is how he learned his craft as a poet. Studying classical Chinese poems helped him understand how silence, structure, and implication carry meaning that exposition cannot. The practice shaped his cross-disciplinary spirit and sense of language as a meeting place. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in leading publications like The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review. And as a Pulitzer finalist and National Book Award winner, he’s earned major honors for the 12 books that now circulate in 15 languages. Sze’s poems draw on ecology, scientific structures, and what he calls “the silence inside of sound.” He hopes new readers feel discovery without anxiety — experiencing a poem through a sound, an image, or a single striking moment. As the first Asian American Poet Laureate, he’s placed translation at the heart of a national initiative, nurturing exploration and translation of poetry in classrooms, libraries, and community spaces. “English is a composite tongue,” Sze says. “Translation acknowledges that our literature is a chorus.” And for writers, he shares counsel that has guided him from Berkeley to the Library of Congress: “Write, and don’t stop. Keep your attention tuned to the world.” 🔗 Read Sze’s full story: https://bit.ly/41RQog0 #UCBerkeley #CalAlumStory