Former U.S. Poet Laureate (2008-2010) Kay Ryan has received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. And at virtually the same time as the Pulitzer announcment, the Concord Monitor and the New Hampshire Writers Project announced that she had received the $5, 000 Hall-Kenyon Prize in American Poetry. […]
National Poetry Month: Cyra Dumitru
Cyra Dumitru was born in The Hague, Holland and received degrees in English from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1979 and the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1995. Her professional life has included residencies as a Poet-in-the-Schools as well as years of medical writing in Virginia and San Antonio. A passionate swimmer, […]
National Poetry Month: George Bilgere
George Bilgere is the author of several books of poetry, including The Going (1994), Haywire (2006), The Good Kiss (2010) and The White Museum (2010). Haywire won the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award. Bilgere has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Society of Midland Authors, […]
National Poetry Month: Robert Lee Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer is the poetry columnist for Writer’s Digest Magazine. He has just published his first chapbook, Enter. He read his poems at the recent Blue Ridge Writers Conference and was a National Featured Poet at the Austin International Poetry Festival. He lives with his family in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. Brewer blogs at My […]
National Poetry Month: Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972), a Modernist poet known for her irony and wit (so says Wikipedia), was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Her first poems were published in 1915, and she came to the attention of Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. She became editor […]
National Poetry Month: Links We Like
One of the marvelous things about the internet is how it has upended the publishing status quo, brought all kinds of new writers to the fore, and brought all kinds of writing to the attention of people all over the world. This is as true for poetry as it is for any other kind of […]
National Poetry Month: Maureen Doallas — and a Giveaway
Maureen Doallas is an honors graduate of Vassar College, and has been a features writer and editor for more than 35 years. One of her poems is included in the Gulf of Mexico charity anthology Oil and Water… and Other Things That Don’t Mix (LL-Publications, 2010); two poems appear at Poets for Living Waters; and […]
National Poetry Month: Nicholas Samaras
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 […]
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 […]