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Douglas Kearney has published nine books ranging from poetry to essays to libretti. His most recent poetry book is I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always, a collection of visual poetry. He is also the author of a collection of talks he presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series titled Optic Subwoof (Wave Books, 2022). His poetry collection, Sho (Wave Books, 2021), is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner, and a National Book Award, Pen America, Hurston/Wright, Kingsley Tufts, and Big Other Book Award finalist. He is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. Kearney is a 2022 McKnight Writing Fellow. A Whiting Writer’s and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee with residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others, he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.
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Reviews
Kearney's poetry continues to occupy multiple realms of past and present, untouched space and palimpsest, physical location and collective memory. Perhaps it was destined to do so from the poet's earliest days.
Destiny O. Birdsong, Poets & Writers
Reading Kearney’s poems is like being inside of a crystal — depending on the time of day and how the light is shining through the crystal, the poem’s meaning can change.
LA Review of Books, review-in-dialogue with Dean Rader and Victoria Chang
A charismatic creator of performance and print, Kearney is a contradictory artist: He writes from the vernacular and hip hop, slang, sprung rhythms and song riffs, but also mutates English into an intellectually dense, artificial language no one could ever speak.
Ken Chen, NPR Review of Books
AudioDouglas Kearney in conversation with Destiny O. Birdsong:
VisualDouglas Kearney reads for the Museum of Contemporary Art
Douglas Kearney reads "Sho" as part of the Poetry Center’s Tenth Muse evening at the 92nd Street Y
Articles
Interviews and Discussions
