A pair of Virginia poets will share the 2008 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry.

Bob Hicok, an assistant professor of English at Virginia Tech, and Charles Wright, the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia, will receive the award and read selections of their work Monday in Washington at the Library of Congress. The program, which will take place at the James Madison Building, is free and open to the public.

Hicok won for his book, "This Clumsy Living." Wright is being honored for lifetime achievement.

The biennial award, which carries a $10,000 prize, is financed by the family of the late Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt, sister of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Hicok has written five books of poetry, including "The Legend of Light," which was an American Library Association Booklist Notable Book of 1995 and won the 1995 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Hicok also has won two Pushcart Prizes, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and publication in three volumes of Best American Poetry.

Wright won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "Black Zodiac." He also has won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. His most recent include "Littlefoot: A Poem" and "Scar Tissue," which was the international winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize.

- Bill Lohmann