$100,000 prize buys time for poet

The country’s largest prize for a volume of poetry -- $100,000 -- will be awarded tonight at the Getty Center to English Renaissance scholar Linda Gregerson, known for her lyricism and piercing three-line stanzas on social and ecological subjects.

Gregerson, 52, will receive the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her third collection, “Waterborne” (Houghton Mifflin). In addition, poet Joanie Mackowski will receive the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The ceremony and reading, open to the public, begins at 7:30 p.m.

“I can scarcely tell you how deeply I feel this honor,” said Gregerson, who hasn’t decided yet how she’ll spend the money. The University of Michigan professor and mother of two teenagers said she’d probably take on fewer writing assignments. “What money always means for writers is blessed time,” she said.

The award is presented annually by Claremont Graduate University to a mid-career poet.