Colette Inez

Colette reading her poetry at Juilliard
Born	Colette Inez 1931 Brussels, Belgium
Residence	New York, NY, United States
Alma mater	Hunter College
Occupation	poet, academic
Employer	Columbia University (1983-present)

Colette Inez (born 1931) is an American poet and composer, and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She has published over nine books of poetry and has won the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA Fellowships) and two Pushcart Prizes and many other awards. Her memoir, The Secret of M. Dulong, was released in 2008, by The University of Wisconsin Press.^[1]

Early life and education

Born as love child of a French scholar and a French-American priest in Brussels, Colette Inez spent her early years in a Belgian Catholic orphanage, arriving in America as an apparent orphan at the age of eight at the start of World War II, the next few years she lived with an abusive adoptive family on Long Island, New York.^[2][3]

She graduated from Hunter College.

Career

Sidelights, angels, fifes and harps
Aha, aha
it's no ordinary morning
Brother Love has gone for logs...
("Gospels in the Drifts")

Colette Inez ^[4]

Her first book, The Woman Who Loved Worms (1972), was adapted into a dance performance by the Saeko Ichinohe Dance Company. Five of her poems were used as the lyrics of a song cycle, Miz Inez Sez, featured on Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Del Tredici’s album Secret Music (2002) ^[2]: "Alive and Taking Names," "The Happy Child," "Good News! Nilda is Back," and "Chateauneuf du Pape, the Pope's Valet Speaks" (all from her 1993 collection Getting Under Way: New and Selected Poems), as well as "The Beckoning" (first published in the New Orleans Review in 1999).

She has taught at Bucknell University, Ohio University, Denison University, State University of New York (Stony Brook), Hunter College, University of Tennessee (Knoxville), The New School and started teaching at Columbia University in 1983 starting the Columbia University School of General Studies and subsequently as a lecturer at University's the Undergraduate Writing Program.

Over the years, she has published over nine books, as well as several essays and short stories in journals. Her work has been part of several anthologies.^[1][5][6] Her Lyrics and Libretto, have set to music by Mira J. Spektor, for Villa Diodatti (2008), directed by Rob Urbinati^[7]

Personal life

She lives in New York City with her husband, who is a freelance writer ^[6]

Works

• The Woman Who Loved Worms, Doubleday, 1972.
• Alive and Taking Names. Ohio University Press, 1977.
• Eight Minutes from the Sun. Saturday Press, 1983.
• Family Life, Story Line Press, 1992
• Getting Underway: New & Selected Poetry, Story Line Press, 1993.
• Naming the Moons. Press of Appletree Alley, 1994.
• Clemency', Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998.
• Spinoza Doesn't Come Here Anymore, Melville House Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-0-974960-91-3.
• The Secret of M. Dulong, University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. ISBN 0299214206.Excerpts
• For Reasons of Music ^[8]

Awards

• 1985: Guggenheim Fellowship ^[9]
• Rockefeller Fellowship
• NEA Fellowship (twice)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Colette Inez Profile and Works Poets & Writers website.
2. ^ ^{a b} Colette Inez Poetry Foundation.
3. ^ The Secret of M. Dulong: A Memoir University of Wisconsin Press.
4. ^ The Poetry Worm: A Portrait of Colette Inez by Dennis Bernstein Tulane University website.
5. ^ Colette Inez Profile and works Ploughshares website.
6. ^ ^{a b} Colette Inez Biography Ecstatic occasions, expedient forms: 85 leading contemporary poets select and comment on their poems, by David Lehman. University of Michigan Press, 1996. ISBN 0472066331. p. 105.
7. ^ New York Musical Theatre Festival
8. ^ Colette Inez Open Library.
9. ^ All Fellows: Colette Inez- 1985- Creative Arts-Poetry John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website.

External links

• Colette Inez Page at Columbia University
• Colette Inez, Biography and Poems at Poetry Foundation
• The Poetry Worm: A Portrait of Colette Inez by Dennis Bernstein at Tulane University

Persondata
Name	Inez, Colette
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1931
Place of birth	Brussels, Belgium
Date of death
Place of death