Special feature on Women and Ecopoetics: Biographies
Dorothy Alexander has just completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. For her PhD she wrote a prosimetrum, titled ‘Cage’, in which experimental poetics were used to intuit and disclose the disease processes associated with dementia. She won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short story award in 2002. After studying History, she worked in the NHS for over twenty years. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
Christopher Arigo’s first poetry collection Lit interim won the 2001-2002 Transcontinental Poetry Prize (selected by David Bromige) and was published by Pavement Saw Press (2003). His second collection In the archives (2007) was recently published by Omnidawn Press. Currently a Schaeffer Poetry Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he is also the Managing Editor of the literary magazine Interim. His translations of Italian poet Dome Bulfaro is forthcoming in a bilingual edition of his collection Bones and flesh (Le Voci della Luna, Bologna, 2008). Additionally, he is currently working on a scholarly anthology of Contemporary Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics.
Cara Benson currently believes in the accessibility of the inaccessible poem. Her work has, is, or will appear in 88, pom2, Sentence, and BoogCity. She is editing a collection of writing for Chain Magazine, and her "Quantum Chaos and Poems: A Manifest(o)ation" is forthcoming from BookThug. Benson makes poems every Tuesday afternoon with male inmates at Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility in upstate NY.
One of Tina Darragh’s first attempts at poetry, on the corner to off the corner (Sun & Moon, 1981), is a series of dictionary transcriptions inspired by and dedicated to Francis Ponge. Her current project, opposable dumbs, is an investigation into problems posed by the language/no language of the animal rights movement. Darragh lives in Greenbelt, Maryland (US), and earns her keep as a reference librarian. darraghm@georgetown.edu
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs: Writer, vocalist and sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, is the author of three chapbooks which include Ichi-Ban and Ni-Ban (MOH Press), and Manuel is destroying my bathroom (Belladonna Press), as well as the album, Televisíon. Her work has been published in Nocturnes, Rattapallax, Spoken Word Revolution Redux, drumvoices review, and Tea Party Magazine. LaTasha has recieved scholarships, residencies, and fellowships from Cave Canem, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, Naropa Institute, Caldera Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Eban Demarest Trust. LaTasha is the poetry curator for, www.exittheapple.com. She is a Harlem Elohi Aniyunwiya Native.
Marcella Durand's books include Western Capital Rhapsodies, The Anatomy of Oil and, forthcoming in 2008, two new collections: Traffic & Weather (Futurepoem Books) and Area (Belladonna Books). Her essays on ecology and poetry have been published in Ecopoetics and 26, and are forthcoming in the ((eco (lang) (uage (reader)), edited by Evelyn Reilly and Brenda Iijima. She is currently working on a book-length translation of Michèle Métail’s Les Horizons du sol (The Earth’s Horizons). marcelladurand@sprynet.com
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is an American poet-critic, whose on-going long poem project, begun in 1986, is collected in Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt Publishing, 2007) as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnnumbered: Précis (Salt Publishing, 2004). In 2006, two books of her innovative essays were published: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work on gender and poetics, along with reprinting of the ground-breaking The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice, both from University of Alabama Press.
Ann Fisher-Wirth is the author of two books of poems: Blue Window (Archer Books, 2003) and Five Terraces (Wind Publications, 2005). She has also published two chapbooks: The Trinket Poems (Wind, 2003) and Walking Wu Wei’s Scroll (online, Drunken Boat, 2005). Her work, which has appeared widely, has received a Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, the Rita Dove Poetry Award, two Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, and six Pushcart nominations, including a 2007 Special Mention. In 2006 she was President of the 1000-member international Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). She teaches at the University of Mississippi.
Susanna Fry is a poet who writes and educates in Philadelphia. She has had poems published in such journals as PMS: poemmemoirstory, Saint Elizabeth Street, and Five Fingers Review.
Arpine Konyalian Grenier is a graduate of the American University of Beirut and the MFA Program at Bard College, NY. Her work has appeared in How2, Columbia Poetry Review, Sulfur, The Iowa Review, Big Bridge, and elsewhere. She recently moved to Tucson, AZ.
Cynthia Hogue's most recent collection of poetry is The Incognito Body (2006). She is the co-editor of Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews (2006), and the first edition of H.D.'s The Sword Went Out to Sea, by Delia Alton (2007). Hogue is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University (USA).
Janis Butler Holm lives in Athens, Ohio, where she has served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal. Her essays, stories, poems, and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. She is currently on the staff of /nor: New Ohio Review.
Jane Joritz-Nakagawa's first book of poems, Skin Museum, was published by Avant Books, Tokyo in 2006. Her second collection, Aquiline, featuring a long poem about the war in Iraq, is forthcoming. She teaches American poetry, gender, educational psychology and other subjects at a national school of education in central Japan where she works as an associate professor. Email is welcome at janenakagawa@yahoo.com or jane@auecc.aichi-edu.ac.jp.
Elisabeth Joyce is an associate professor at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Her earlier work has been on Marianne Moore’s poetry and the visual arts. Her current work is on Susan Howe’s poetry and questions of space. She also studies online communities.
Siel Ju lives and writes in Los Angeles – and plans to finish her degree in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California in the next year. A long-time SoCal girl, Siel’s currently finding out what writing poetry means amidst Hummers, immigration protests, and urban community gardens. Her poems have been published in Poethia, Gargoyle, The 2River View, Ladyfest Anthology, MARY, and So to Speak. Siel also run an environmentally-oriented blog at greenlagirl.com.
Diane Ludin is a writer and media artist. Born in New York, she studied Drawing and Installation at the State University of New York at Purchase (1989-1993) and Computer Art at the School of Visual Arts in (1998-2000). As an artist, she has participated in exhibitions and events such as; New York Digital Salon 2001, Ars Electronica 2002, DEAF 2003, ISEA 2004 and 2006, Whitney ArtPort 2004, Medialabmadrid 2005. She has completed online commissions for; The Walker Art Center, New Radio and Performing Arts, Franklin Furnace, and The Alternative Museum. She has held Artist Residencies for the World Views program in 2000 and Harvestworks in 2004. Diane Ludin is currently a lecturer at the MFA, Computer Art Department—the School of Visual Arts.
Kathleen Miller is a poet and educator currently living in New York, where she is an MFA student at Bard College. Her work has been published in Shampoo, Bay Poetics, and Matrix Magazine. Her chapbook, “The Weather is Happening All Around Us,” was recently published by Delirium Press. She is the editor of Cloud-type, a postcard series featuring collaborative work between visual artists and poets.
Susan Moore graduated with a PhD from the Graduate Division of Educational Research at the University of Calgary in June 2006. Currently, she is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Literature, Sustainability, and Culture in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto, where she teaches courses in Literature and Environmental Ethics and Environmental Writing. Her postdoctoral research investigates philosophical, psychoanalytical, and ethical understandings of self and other through an exploration into literature on the environment. Her essay, "Mourning, Melancholia, and Death Drive Pedagogy: Atwood, Klein, Woolf." appears in Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies: Special Issue, Alberta (March 2005).
Melanie Neilson was born in Humboldt, Tennessee. She grew up in Southern California and moved to New York City in 1983. Neilson is the author of Prop and Guide, Civil Noir, and Natural Facts. She is currently at work on a new book of poems entitled Minor to Major. Her next collection, Sleeping Bag USA, is due to be published in 2008. She lives in Brooklyn.
Frances Presley was born in Derbyshire and now lives in London. Paravane: new and selected poems, 1996-2003 was published by Salt in 2004: the title sequence is a response to 9/11/2001. Myne: new and selected poems and prose, 1976-2006, was published last year by Shearsman. It includes two new landscape sequences, ‘Myne’ and the most recent, ‘Stone settings’, which takes as its framework the Neolithic stone sites on Exmoor, and is part of a collaboration with the poet Tilla Brading. She has written various reviews and essays, andhas been on the editorial board of How2 since 1997.
a.rawlings is a poet, multidisciplinary artist, editor, and arts educator. In 2001, she received the bpNichol Award for Distinction in Writing. angela co-edited Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury, 2005). Her first book, Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), received an Alcuin Award for Book Design and was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. Wide slumber was translated from page to stage for Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch: Emerging Performance Projects. Website: www.commutiny.net.
Anna Reckin teaches Creative Writing through the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of East Anglia and is currently working on a book on landscapes and soundscapes in contemporary American poetry. Her poems, essays and book reviews have been published in the UK and the US, most recently in Shearsman and Modern Poetry in Translation. A digital version of her book Broder (an artists book collaboration) appeared in the March 2001 issue of How2.
Evelyn Reilly’s most recent work has been published in the chapbook Fervent Remnants of Reflective Surfaces by Portable Press at Yo Yo Labs, and can be found in Lungfull! and upcoming editions of Aufgabe, Gam, and War and Peace. Reilly’s first book, Hiatus, was published by Barrow Street Press in 2004. She has taught visual poetics at St. Marks Poetry Project and is co-curator of the winter segment of the Segue Reading Series. Reilly is currently editing the )((eco (lang)(uage(reader)) with Brenda Iijima, a collection of essays that will be published in Fall 2007.
Linda Russo is the author of MIRTH (Chax Press, 2007) and o going out (Potes & Poets, 1999), among other small books. A graduate of Buffalo's Poetics Program, she now teaches at the University of Oklahoma, where she incorporates listening to the environment, film, sound art, and poetry in her writing class. Her essay "'Precious, rare and mundane': Some Thoughts on the Work of Joanne Kyger" prefaces Kyger's recently-published About Now: Collected Poems (National Poetry Foundation, 2007).
Jonathan Skinner edits the review ecopoetics, teaches Environmental Studies at Bates College and lives in Bowdoinham, Maine. His Political Cactus Poems are available through Palm Press. His essays on the poets Ronald Johnson and Lorine Niedecker are forthcoming in volumes published by the National Poetry Foundation and by University of Iowa Press.
Jane Sprague is editor and publisher of Palm Press (www.palmpress.org). Her poems and critical writings are published in Gam, Hot Whiskey, Tinfish, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Tarpaulin Sky, Kiosk, ecopoetics and elsewhere. Her books, The Port of Los Angeles and Extreme Global: La Ciudad sin Extremo / Los Angeles are forthcoming from Chax and Chain Links presses, respectively, in 2008. She teaches writing and literature in Southern California.
Harriet Tarlo is a poet and academic who lives in West Yorkshire, U.K. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. Her most recent poetry books are Love/Land, Rem Press, 2003, Poems 1990-2003, Shearsman Books, 2004 and Nab (Brancepeth Beck, Coast and Nab), etruscan books, 2005. Her poetry has appeared in several British and American magazines and is featured in Foil: defining poetry 1985-2000, ed. Nicholas Johnson, etruscan books, 2000. She has published numerous essays on modernist and contemporary poetry, gender and environment/landscape.
Addie Tsai holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in Born Magazine, American Letters & Commentary, NOON: A Journal of the Short Poem, and Forklift, Ohio, among others. Her work is forthcoming in an Asian American Female Anthology in 2008. She also received third place in Tin House Magazine's 2006 SLS – Kenya Contest. Addie lives in Houston, Texas.
Carol Watts lives in London. She is the author of Wrack (Reality Street, 2007), brass, running (Equipage, 2006), and alphabetise, a book of prose chronicles, exhibited in the Text Festival at the Museum of Art, Bury, Manchester in 2005, now available as a free eBook (Intercapillary Editions). She teaches at Birkbeck, University of London, where she co-directs the Centre for Poetics. Her publications include Dorothy Richardson, and The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years’ War and the Imagining of the Shandean State.