Poetry

Our faculty includes a diverse group of poet/teachers making their mark on contemporary literature. Maggie Smith’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere; her poetry collection Goldenrod was a national bestseller and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR. Kathleen Driskell’s Next Door to the Dead was a Kentucky Voices selection by the University Press of Kentucky and winner of the 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award. Greg Pape served as Poet Laureate of Montana. Douglas Manuel is gaining notice as an up-and-coming new voice with an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. Affrilachian poet Keith S. Wilson’s groundbreaking visual poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, the Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. Every member of our faculty is a dedicated, caring teacher. Visit our faculty page to read more.

A statement by our poetry faculty distills their approach to teaching:

At Spalding, poetry students are exposed to a range of contemporary poetry, from new formalism to free, open forms to language poetry or experimental poetry. Mentors follow the students’ lead and work with their poems as objectively as possible, not encouraging poets to “write like me” but to flourish in their chosen styles. Faculty stress reading the work aloud, placing the work in context and developing a poetic voice, as well as considerations such as the integrity of the line in open form, stanza formation, use of form or rhyme (if applicable), connections to contemporary poets and others in literary history, and revision.

This approach helps our students and alums launch themselves into the world as practicing, publishing poets. One poetry alum won the Tampa Review Prize for her full-length collection and was named a NEA Literature Fellow. One alum serves as president of the Cave Canem board of directors. One served as Poet Laureate of Kentucky and won a Lannan Literary Award for poetry and an NAACP Image Award. One alum edited an anthology about the work of W.S. Merwin. Another is a slam poet, educator, youth mentor, and activist.

Alums’ poetry collections have been published by University of Georgia Press, University Press of Kentucky, Milkweed Editions, and many other distinguished presses.

Past visiting poets include: