Matthew Tuckner wins 29th annual Levis Reading Prize for ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’

By Bhavya Bhagtani

Matthew Tuckner has won the 2026 Levis Reading Prize for his debut full-length poetry collection, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The prize is awarded annually for the best first or second book of poetry published in the previous calendar year, and the winner is chosen by the MFA in Creative Writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University. The prize honors the memory of poet Larry Levis, who was a VCU faculty member at the time of his death in 1996.

Tuckner will receive an award of $5,000 and will give a reading from his work on Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. in the James Branch Cabell Library lecture hall on the VCU campus, scheduled as a hybrid event held both in person and streaming online.

Tuckner received his MFA in creative writing from New York University and is currently a Ph.D. student in English/creative writing at University of Utah, where he is managing editor of Western Humanities Review. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Nation, Kenyon Review and Best New Poets, among other titles.

“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was published by Four Way Books in 2025. Tuckner’s upcoming poetry collection, “Cloud Chamber,” is also set to be published by Four Way Books in 2028.

In “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” through 53 poems that share the same title, Tuckner creates a landscape that compels readers to navigate philosophy, history and ecological collapses amid the vast expanses of private grief and longings. The poems capture contemporary and ancient catastrophes with a vividness distinct to Tuckner’s voice.

Erick Verran, in The Hopkins Review, noted that “the funny thing about Tuckner’s attention is that it manages to be at once logical and comic.” Catherine Barnett, in commending the collection’s intricately juxtapositioned worlds, compares reading “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” with “listening to someone record the apocalypse happening in real time in language so charged and with images so vivid you might forget the apocalypse is here.”

In winning the Levis Reading Prize, Tuckner joins past recipients who include Weijia Pan for “Motherlands,” Elisa Gonzalez for “Grand Tour,” Corey Van Landingham for “Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens,” Ilya Kaminsky for “Deaf Republic,” Jenny Xie for “Eye Level,” Kaveh Akbar for “Calling a Wolf a Wolf” and Solmaz Sharif for “Look.”

The Oct. 29 event is presented by the MFA in Creative Writing program in the VCU Department of English and by VCU Libraries, with additional support from the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences and the family of Larry Levis.

For further information about the Levis Reading Prize, visit the webpage, call 804-828-1329, or email 2026 prize coordinator Bhavya Bhagtani at levis@vcu.edu or prize co-directors Edgar Kunz and Devon Walker-Figueroa at kunze@vcu.edu or walkerfigud@vcu.edu, respectively.