The New Criterion, which has published poetry since 1984, is recognized as one of the foremost contemporary venues for poetry with a regard for traditional meter and poetic form. The magazine was thus an early leader in that poetic renaissance that has come to be called the New Formalism. Building on its commitment to serious poetry, The New Criterion has established an annual poetry prize, which carries an award of $3,000. The first winner is Donald Petersen, for his book Early and Late. Judges for the year 2000 were Donald Justice, Roger Kimball, Hilton Kramer, Robert Richman, and Elizabeth Spires. Of Mr. Petersen, Donald Justice writes: "He has long been an underappreciated master of formal verse. He is a perfectionist, willing to spend actual years polishing and repolishing his poems. If it is hard to tell the older poems from the new, that is because what they really are is timeless."