C. D. Wright

poet.

Carolyn D. Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas to a chancery judge and a court reporter. She earned a BA from Memphis State College (now the University of Memphis) in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which she received in 1976. In 1979, she took a position at the San Francisco State University Poetry Center, which exposed her to many of the leading proponents of language poetry. In 1983 she moved to Providence, Rhode Island to teach writing at Brown University, where she is Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. Stephen Burt has described her as an Elliptical Poet.

Wright's early poetry was often narrative, but her later work has become increasingly experimental. Her poetry is strongly rooted in a sense of place and regional voices, particularly those of Rhode Island and the Ozarks. She has published literary maps of both Rhode Island and Arkansas. Her first and second books, "Room Rented by a Single Woman" and "Terrorism: Poems", were published by Frank Stanford's Lost Roads Publishers. Wright and her husband, Forrest Gander, began running Lost Roads after Stanford's death in 1978. Wright's later work includes "String Light"; "Deepstep Come Shining", a book-length poem; and "One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana", a collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster. She has won several prestigious awards, including her appointment to the post of poet laureate of the state of Rhode Island in 1994, a Guggenheim fellowship, and, in 2004, a MacArthur Fellowship. Her poems are featured in "American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets" (2006) and many other anthologies.

Works

*"Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues" (SUNY Press, 1981)
*"Further Adventures with You" (Carnegie Mellon, 1986)
*"String Light" (U. of Georgia Press, 1991)
*"Just Whistle" (Kelsey Street Press, 1993)
*"Tremble" (Ecco, 1996)
*"Deepstep Come Shining" (Copper Canyon, 1998)
*"Steal Away: New and Selected Poems" (Copper Canyon, 2002) (shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
*"One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana" (Twin Palms, 2003) with photographs by Deborah Luster
*"Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil" (Copper Canyon, 2005)
*"Rising, Falling, Hovering" (Copper Canyon, 2008)

External links

* [http://www.poets.org/search.php/fs/1/prmAuthor/C+D+Wright/prmMediaTitle/+/prmKeyword/+/prmMediaTypeID/0/prmMovementID/0/prmThemeID/0 C. D. Wright--The Academy of American Poets]
* [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/cdwright/johnson.htm Interview from Jacket Magazine]
* [http://slate.msn.com/?id=57533 "Only the crossing counts,"] "Slate" magazine
* [http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=1509 "Bent Tones"]
* [http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/shortlist_2003.php?t=7 Griffin Poetry Prize biography, including audio and video clips]