Ailish Hopper

Ailish Hopper (born Washington DC) is an American poet and teacher.

Hopper has published a chapbook called Bird in the Head (2005); she has also published a poetry collection called Dark~Sky Society (2014), which explores racial tensions.[1] In an interview with WYPR, she has noted her interest in race relations as being a consequence of her coming of age in DC and of her Irish heritage.[2][3] Hopper's poetry has also been included in Agni, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Harvard Review Online, Tidal Basin Review, among others.[4][5] In addition to page poetry, she has performed with the band Heroes are Gang Leaders, along with poets Thomas Sayers Ellis and Randall Horton, and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis.[6][7] Hopper has also written essays about race relations, including one in Boston Review, "Can a Poem Listen? Variations on Being-white."[8]

Hopper graduated from Princeton University with a BA in religion and a certificate in African-American studies, and graduated from Bennington College with an MFA in creative writing and literature. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio, and Yaddo. She currently is an assistant professor in Goucher College's peace studies department.[9]

Honors and Awards

2013 Maryland State Individual Artist grant

2013 New Issues Poetry prize runner-up[10]

2005 Center for Book Arts prize[11]

Published works

"Did it Ever Occur to You that Maybe You're Falling in Love" Poetry magazine, January 2016[12]

Dark~Sky Society (New Issues, 2014)

"The Good Caucasian" Harvard Review Online, August 2014[13]

"Dream, Technidifficult" Academy of American Poets[14]

"Circle in the Grass" Blackbird, Spring 2014[15]

Bird in the Head (Center for Book Arts, 2005)

Reviews

Jane Hirshfield:

"Hopper attends to an examination of her own place in this American landscape of intimate and indelible participation...and offers to say what the less courageous or less moved leave unsaid."[16]

Greg Tate:

"“[T]he taut economy of Ailish Hopper’s syntax befits a chronicler bent on this government town’s nightly collapse of the personal and sociopolitical….Hopper’s poems dance on this divided skein with sculpted and oblique turns of phrase — lyrical arabesques constructed in terse verbal defiance….Consider her verse coiled and sprung; and, to paraphrase an exalted homegrown colloquialism, ‘busted loose’.”[17]

Douglas Kearney:

"...these unsettling poems trace Hopper’s struggle to make sense of terrible legacies, from racial violence in the name of white female bodies to a father’s terminal illness as a site of private and public histories. Hopper’s lines halt, knot, interdigitate, and stutter, but they never flinch. She leaves that to the reader. What she doesn’t offer us are easy epiphanies, a bid for being a good caucasian, or post-race snake oil. This is difficult work for a time when ‘any touch/will bruise’. Dark~Sky Society insists we reach and be reached anyway.”[18]

References

  1. ↑ "Ailish Hopper". Speaking of Marvels.
  2. ↑ Hall, Tom. "Poetry That Explores Racial Lines". wypr.org.
  3. ↑ "The Poetry of Race: Dark~Sky Society by Ailish Hopper '93". Princeton Alumni Weekly. 2014-10-31. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  4. ↑ "Ailish Hopper". Speaking of Marvels. 13 December 2013.
  5. ↑ "Ailish Hopper - Late Night Library". Late Night Library. 24 October 2014.
  6. ↑ "About". AILISH HOPPER. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  7. ↑ "» More Than Hurt: A Choral Interview and Track Sampling Featuring Heroes Are Gang Leaders' Forthcoming Baraka Tribute Album Post No Ills: A New American Review…of Reviews". www.postnoills.com. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  8. ↑ Hopper, Ailish (2015-04-23). "Can a Poem Listen?". Boston Review. ISSN 0734-2306. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  9. ↑ "Ailish Hopper". Goucher College.
  10. ↑ "Hopper-Dark~Sky Society". wmich.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  11. ↑ "Bird in the Head by Ailish Hopper". The Center for Book Arts. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  12. ↑ "Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love?". www.poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  13. ↑ "Ailish Hopper | Harvard Review Online". harvardreview.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  14. ↑ "Dream, Technidifficult | Academy of American Poets". www.poets.org. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  15. ↑ ""Circle in the Grass" by Ailish Hopper | Blackbird v13n1 | #poetry". www.blackbird.vcu.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  16. ↑ "Editors' Shelf: Book Recommendations from Our Advisory Editors". Ploughshares. 41 (1): 219–220. doi:10.1353/plo.2015.0112. ISSN 2162-0903.
  17. ↑ "Hopper-Dark~Sky Society". wmich.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
  18. ↑ "Hopper-Dark~Sky Society". wmich.edu. Retrieved 2016-05-15.
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