Amy Dryansky

My second book, Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry, Ireland) received the 2014 Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. My first, How I Got Lost So Close to Home, won the New England/New York Award from Alice James. My work is included in several anthologies, most recently, Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse, from Lost Horse Press. Individual poems appear in a variety of journals, including Barrow Street, Harvard Review, New England Review, Memorious, Orion, Tin House, The Sun and The Women’s Review of Books.

I’ve received honors/awards from the Poetry Society of America, Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. I was also an Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, where I looked at the impact of motherhood on women poets. While there I started a blog, Pokey Mama, about my struggle to navigate the terrain of mother/poet that I hoped would also be a support to other women in similar circumstances. I’m a Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA, and assistant director of the Culture, Brain & Development Program at Hampshire College.