The Daily Californian: UC Berkeley alum Arthur Sze makes history as first Asian American poet laureate

Sep 29, 2025 | -

By Yashal Sarfaraz

More than 50 years ago, Arthur Sze was crafting lines of poetry while sitting in a calculus class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Two years later, he transferred to UC Berkeley to study poetry.

On Sept. 15, he was named the next U.S. poet laureate, the first Asian American to receive the honor.

The U.S. poet laureate consultant in poetry, known simply as the U.S. poet laureate, is appointed by the Library of Congress to encourage the country toward “a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry,” according to the Library of Congress website.

Under the recommendation of a former UC Berkeley lecturer, Sze, class of 1972, transferred to UC Berkeley to begin a self-directed major of poetry under the mentorship of professor Josephine Miles, the first woman to earn tenure in the English department, according to Sze.

“So many interesting people had this generosity of spirit and I owe such a huge debt to Berkeley, because I can say, ‘Yes, today, I’m being recognized as the U.S. poet laureate,’” Sze said. “But I couldn’t have done it without Josephine Miles. I couldn’t have done it without Ts’ai Mei-hsi, who was the teaching assistant from Taiwan, who so generously took hours and hours of their own time to show that they believed in me, to go over my writing and my translations and to encourage me.”

In recent years, U.S. poet laureates have been elected to develop their own signature projects to aid in the country’s appreciation of poetry. In his upcoming term, Sze said he plans to focus on promoting the translation of poetry written in other languages.

During his time at UC Berkeley, Sze honed his craft by translating ancient Chinese poetry into English. He plans to assemble a poetry guide for high schools, colleges or community workshops to encourage people to write their own translations and then create poetry inspired by those translations.

To read the entire article: https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/uc-berkeley-alum-arthur-sze-makes-history-as-first-asian-american-poet-laureate/article_39d62fc9-8f2a-45f2-9fa7-bd8bc16df980.html

Photo credit: slowking4, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons