It’s a Lilly for Poet C.K. Williams

The Chicago-based Poetry Foundation on Wednesday named C.K. Williams this year’s winner of the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

The Lilly is the latest prestigious award for Williams, a 68-year-old New Jersey native,whose collections “The Singing” won the 2003 National Book Award and “Repair” won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize.

Williams “is a master at dramatizing complicated psychological states, but he is also always equally concerned with the self’s relation to the larger world,” said Christian Wiman, editor of the foundation’s Poetry magazine and one of the judges for the prize. The award is to be presented May 24 in Chicago.