Printable view of Wally Swist

Listed as:

Poet

Public address:

South Hadley, MA

Massachusetts US

Email:

wswist@yahoo.com

Bio:

A recording of a poem from his solo reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival is archived at npr.org. A short documentary biographical film regarding his work as a poet and a writer was released by WildArts in 2008, In Praise of the Earth: The Poetry of Wally Swist, and has been screened at a number of venues, including at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Contact and queries regarding a screening of the film, especially with respect to organizations affiliated with the natural world and/or the literary arts are most welcome. He has published a scholarly monograph, The Friendship of Two New England Poets: Robert Frost and Robert Francis, with The Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. He is the editor and writer of Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker, illustrated by Olga Larionova, and published in hardcover by Talmi Entertainment in November 2012. The Operating System, of Brooklyn, NY, published his book, Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir, in 2018.

Gives readings:

Yes

Travels for readings:

Yes

In which languages are you fluent?:

English

Favorite authors:

Hannah Arendt, Jane Brox, Pema Chodron, Robert Francis, Jack Gilbert, Margaret Gibson, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Federico Garcia Lorca, W. S. Merwin, Lorine Niedecker, Eva Pierrakos, Kenneth Rexroth, Rainer Maria Rilke, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Walt Whitman, Russel Williams

Born in:

New Haven, CT

Connecticut

Prizes won:

Former Poet-in-Residence, Fort Juniper, the Robert Francis Homestead (1998, 2003-2005); recipient of Artist Fellowship Awards in Poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1978, 2003); one of seven finalists chosen from New England and New York to read their poetry in the 40th Anniversary of the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention (Creative Session) (2009); co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Competition for Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love; 2nd Prize in the 2012 W. B. Yeats Society of New York Poetry Competition; recipient of the Philip Whalen Memorial Grant from Poets in Need and grants of financial assistance from the Author's League Fund, The Carnegie Foundation for Authors, The Haven Foundation, and PEN America; winner of the Snapshot Press (U.K.) Book Award for The Windbreak Pine: New and Uncollected Haiku, 1985-2015, which was awarded a Touchstone Award from The Haiku Foundation in 2016; winner of the 2018 Adelaide Books Essay Contest for the essay, On Beauty; winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize for A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature.

What I'm reading now:

Not I, Not other than I by Russel Williams

By Monomoy Light: Nature and Healing in an Island Sanctuary by North T. Cairn

Coast Road by Robert Gray

The Mays of Ventadorn by W. S. Merwin

Rilke: A Life by Wolfgang Leppmann

The Lost Upland: Stories of Southwest France by W. S. Merwin

Prefers to work with:

Any