Nicholas Samaras is a poet and essayist, and author of Hands of the Saddlemaker (1992), which won the 1991 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Born in England in 1952, Samaras was raised there and in Massachusetts, later settling in New York. He is the son of Bishop Kallistos Samaras, a prominent Greek Orthodox priest […]
Search Results for: "national poetry month"
National Poetry Month: Mark Jarman
Mark Jarman, Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky and raised on California and Scotland. He’s the author of nine books of poetry, two books of essays and a book of essays co-authored with Robert McDowell. Jarman graduated from the University of Califorina at Santa Cruz […]
National Poetry Month: David Orr’s “Beautiful & pointless”
David Orr, poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, wrote Beautiful & pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry for me, or for readers very nearly like me: familiar with poetry but not wildly knowledgeable, who write poetry on occasion but are not particularly enthused about publishing it; and who are both aware of […]
National Poetry Month: Steven Marty Grant
Steven Marty Grant describes himself as a Southern California boy transplanted to New York City. To read his poems, you’d think he was a New York native. His poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines and journals, and he graduated from “a school you never heard of and had so many majors that […]
National Poetry Month: Anya Krugovoy Silver
Anya Krugovoy Silver is professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She has published poetry in numerous journals, including Image, New Ohio Review, Witness, Prairie Schooner, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Anglican Theological Review, Laurel Review, Iowa Review, North American Review and others. Her first collection, The Ninety-Third Name of […]
National Poetry Month: Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky was born in 1977 in Odessa in The Ukraine (then the Soviet Union), and came to the United States in 1993 when his family was granted political asylum. He is the author of the chapbook Musica Humana and Dancing in Odessa, which won several awards. He’s also received a Whiting Writers’ Award, the […]
National Poetry Month: J. Michael Martinez
J. Michael Martinez is a young poet but already one with impressive credentials. A graduate of Northern Colorado University (B.A.) and George Mason University (M.F.A.), his poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He received the 2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize and […]
National Poetry Month: Ava Leavell Haymon
Ava Leavell Haymon has written three poetry collections — Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread, Kitchen Heat and The Strict Economy of Fire, and published five chapbooks from small presses. She’s also written seven plays for children. She teaches poetry writing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and directs a writers’ retreat center in the mountains […]
National Poetry Month: Andrei Codrescu
The first time I heard of Andrei Codrescu, he was speaking on National Public Radio. And he was speaking about my hometown, New Orleans. And he was speaking like he knew what he was talking about, which he did, and with an Eastern European accent. Who was this guy? Codrescu was born in Romania. He […]
National Poetry Month: Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech University, where she teaches writing and literature. A poet, activist and educator, Giovanni is the author of more than 30 books, has received 19 honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and has even been nominated for a Grammy Award. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1943, she […]
National Poetry Month: Scott Cairns
Scott Cairns, professor of English and Director of Creativity Writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the author of six collections of poetry, the memoir Short Trip to the Edge, the non-fiction work The End of Suffering, and numerous articles, essays and even a libretto for an oratorio. I had the distinct pleasure of taking […]
National Poetry Month: Luci Shaw
Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, retreat leader and teacher. She’s published eight books of poetry, and her poems have appeared in publications ranging from Books & Culture and The Christian Century to The Southern Review. She is currently Writer in Residence for Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Shaw was born in England in […]
It’s National Poetry Month
There must be something one can say about National Poetry Month starting on April Fool’s Day. But I can’t, or won’t. For National Poetry Month 2011, TweetSpeak Poetry will be featuring a series of posts on poets living and dead, published and unpublished, and including links to sites that we’ve found on the internet that […]
National Poetry Month: Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe published his 1st poetry collection in 1827, at 18 years old. A tendency to run up debts & gamble kept him in constant state of reinvention.
National Poetry Month: Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell (1917-1977) was born to a prominent Boston family. He attended Harvard for two years, and then transferred to Kenyon College, where he studied poetry under John Crowe Ransom. Then he took graduate courses at Louisiana State University, where he studied under Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. His second book of poetry, Lord […]
National Poetry Month: Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) became widely known and appreciated only after her suicide. She published her first poem at age 18 (in the Christian Science Monitor) and had only one book of poetry, Colossus, published by the time of her death. (Before her death, she had published the semi-autobiographical The Bell Jar under the pseudonym Victoria […]
National Poetry Month: Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert (1925 – ) published his first book of poems, Views of Jeopardy, in 1962, and his second, Monolithos, nearly 20 years later. In between he moved to Europe, traveled as a lecturer on American literature for the U.S. State Department. He’s also the author of three other books of poetry: Transgressions: Selected Poems, […]
National Poetry Month: Edna St. Vincent Millay
At the age of 20, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) entered her poem “Renascence” in a contest and won fourth place, which meant publication in The Lyric Year – and a scholarship to Vassar (makes you wonder what the first place winner received). She graduated in 1917, and that same year published her first volume, […]
National Poetry Month: The Best American Poetry 2009
It takes work to put together an anthology like The Best American Poetry 2009. The editor, in this case David Wagoner, reads scores of literary journals (online and print), general publications, and books of poetry, sifting through literally thousands of poems to select 75 that he or she considers the best of the year. Wagoner, […]
National Poetry Month: T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) is credited with having written the single most influential poetic work of the 20th century, The Waste Land (1922). (Think “April is the cruellest month…”) A native of Missouri (there are Eliot family connections all over St. Louis), he lived in England for most of his life and became a British […]