Bees, And After

The 119th winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize places science at the heart of his powerful poems

For John Liles, science and the natural world form a route into the workings of love, of grief, and of joy in the thrum of life. Judge Rae Armantrout calls his poems "dense, sonically gorgeous studies of various natural things and creatures, including light, bees, minerals, shellfish and crabs, insects, and the workings (and failure) of the heart." Written under the shadow of our changing climate, Liles's poems are tender elegies but also praise-songs for the continual unfolding richness of the world. Writes Liles, "oh unending animal, / you go where / the light goes."