Juliana Spahr

Juliana Spahr
Born 1969
Chillicothe, Ohio
Nationality American
Alma mater Bard College
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Genre poetry
Notable awards O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize
National Poetry Series Award

Juliana Spahr (born 1969) is an American poet, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S. poet whose art and teaching demonstrate great imagination and daring.[1]

Both Spahr's critical and scholarly studies, i.e., Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (2001), and her poetry have shown Spahr's commitment to fostering a "value of reading" as a communal, democratic, open process.[2] Her work therefore "distinguishes itself because she writes poems for which her critical work calls."[3] In addition to teaching and writing poetry, Spahr is also an active editor.[2] Spahr received the National Poetry Series Award for her first collection of poetry, Response (1996).[2]

Life

Born and raised in Chillicothe, Ohio, Spahr received her BA from Bard College and her PhD from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York in English. She has taught at Siena College (1996–7), the University of Hawaii at Manoa (1997–2003), and Mills College (2003–). With Jena Osman, she edited the arts journal Chain from 1993 to 2003.[4]

Activism

Spahr's participation in the 2011 Occupy Movement is chronicled in her 2015 book That Winter The Wolf Came.[5] According to Spahr, she spent time in the encampments and participated in protests, although she and her son "never spent the night."[6] Her work examines social issues, including the repercussions of the BP oil spill, the global impact of 9/11, capitalism, and climate change. She uses poetry as a mechanism to provide cultural recognition and representation to social movements and political actions.[7]

Following the Occupy Movement, the police shootings of Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown, and the 2009 California college tuition hike protests, Spahr founded the publishing project Commune Editions, along with Jasper Bernes and Joshua Clover.[8] The project was founded with the intention to publish poetry as a companion to political action.[9]

Bibliography

Poetry

Fiction

Criticism

Editor

References

  1. Juliana Spahr Wins Prestigious Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library
  2. 1 2 3 O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize: Juliana Spahr note that the 2009 judges were Claudia Rankine and Joshua Weiner.
  3. from the essay "All/Together Now: Writing the Space of Collectivities in the Poetry of Juliana Spahr", American Women Poets in the 21st Century, Wesleyan University Press, 2002.
  4. "Chain, the journal". www.chainarts.org. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  5. http://www.akpress.org/that-winter-the-wolf-came-5574.html
  6. Burt, Stephen (2015-08-26). "'That Winter the Wolf Came,' by Juliana Spahr". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  7. Foundation, Poetry. "Responding to 'What Is Literary Activism?'". Harriet: The Blog. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  8. "About". communeeditions.com. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  9. "About". communeeditions.com. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
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