PAGES : Paying Tribute to a Poet

What will become the largest single poetry prize in the United States will be given for the first time at the Claremont Graduate School in April.

Kate Tufts of Los Angeles has donated $1.25 million to endow the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, which honors her late husband, poet and writer Kingsley Tufts. The couple had been married 58 years when Tufts died in 1991.

“We are absolutely delighted that Kate Tufts has chosen the Claremont Graduate School as the home for this most affectionate tribute to her late husband,” said CGS President John D. Maguire. “We believe the Kingsley Tufts Award will almost immediately become the most prestigious award in the world of poetry.”

The first prize of $50,000 will be given to an American poet whose 1992 work is judged most worthy by a panel of five judges. The award will be announced April 2 and presented April 26.

Kingsley Tufts came to his first love--writing--after a business career. Reared on a farm in Indiana, he received a degree in economics at Stanford and worked as a certified public accountant before returning to Stanford in 1936 to prepare to be a writer.

His poetry and fiction appeared in a number of major magazines, and after he retired to Los Angeles in 1957, he wrote several books, including “Poems: New and Collected,” “Little White Song Book for Peace” and “The Mystery of Poetry.”