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Poetry

  • Join us at 3 PM ET (2 PM CT/1 PM MT/12 PM PT) to learn more about the Naslund-Mann School of Writing...

    March 19 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

    MFA Virtual Open House

Our faculty includes a diverse group of poet/teachers making their mark on contemporary literature. Seed Across Snow, by Kathleen Driskell, Chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, was a national bestseller. Greg Pape served as Poet Laureate of Montana. Jeanie Thompson runs the Alabama Writers’ Forum. Debra Kang Dean brings her taiji practice to her poetry and teaching. Douglas Manuel is gaining notice as an up-and-coming new voice with an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. 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 2017 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:

  • U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey (Native Guard)
  • U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner W. S. Merwin (The Shadow of Sirius)
  • Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson (Late Wife)
  • Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa (Neon Vernacular)
  • Maggie Smith (Good Bones)
  • Molly Peacock (The Second Blush: Poems)
  • Naomi Shihab Nye (You and Yours)
  • Gregory Orr (River Inside the River: Poems)
  • NAACP Image Award Winner Frank X Walker (Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers)
  • Join us at 3 PM ET (2 PM CT/1 PM MT/12 PM PT) to learn more about the Naslund-Mann School of Writing...

    March 19 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

    MFA Virtual Open House