Jeff Clark (born 1971) is an American poet and book designer.

Biography

Clark grew up in

southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

. He studied at

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

and completed a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the

Iowa Writer's Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wri ...

. At Davis, Clark drummed for the band Buick, whose album
Sweatertongue
' was released by Lather Records in 1992. In 1995, he moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, where he wrote poetry, edited the

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

''Faucheuse,'' and worked at a book design studio.

Writing

Clark's first book, ''The Little Door Slides Back,'' was a 1996 winner of the

National Poetry Series The National Poetry Series is an American literary awards program. Every year since 1979, the National Poetry Series has sponsored the publication of five books of poetry. Manuscripts are solicited through an annual open competition, judged and cho ...

award. It was published by Sun and Moon Press in 1997, and reprinted in 2004 by

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...

. John Yau, writing in ''

Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

'', said that Clark evoked "a fragile, interior world largely lit by the moon, cheap paperbacks, and noir movies, a place in which predicaments and paradoxes abound." Farrar Straus Giroux also published Clark's second collection, ''Music and Suicide,'' which received the 2004

James Laughlin Award The James Laughlin Award, formerly the Lamont Poetry Prize, is given annually for a poet's second published book; it is the only major poetry award that honors a second book. The award is given by the Academy of American Poets, and is noted as one ...

. John Beer in ''Chicago Review'' said "its ambition is more erotic than programmatic, which makes it hard to place in a critical landscape dominated by twin towers of linguistic materialism and idle taste-mongering. But if this erotic ambition is one more aspect of Clark's untimeliness, that untimeliness may allow him to escape mere datedness to disclose a new poetic future for us all." In 2000, German artist Cosima von Bonin created an installation entitled ''The Little Door Slides Back'' for the Kunstverein Braunschweig. Also in 2000, Z Press published ''Sun On 6,'' which was printed by Leslie Miller at The Grenfell Press. In addition to Clark's poem, it contains Jasper Johns' first linocut. In June 2006, Clark and Geoffrey G. O'Brien released a collaborative book entitled ''2A'', and in 2009, Turtle Point Press published ''Ruins,'' a limited edition book that Clark wrote, illustrated, and designed. With Robert Bononno, Clark translated Stéphane Mallarmé's '' Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard'' (Wave Books, 2015). In 2017, Image Text Ithaca released
Question Like a Face
'. a limited-edition collaborative work, with text by Christine Hume and image treatments by Clark.

Book Design

Clark's

book design Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components and elements of a book into a coherent unit. In the words of renowned typographer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974), book design, "though ...

studio, Crisis, is based in

Ypsilanti, Michigan Ypsilanti (), commonly shortened to Ypsi, is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 20,648. The city is bounded to the north by Superior Township and on the west, south, an ...

. He has designed books for, among others, AK Press, University of Minnesota Press, Flood Editions, Leon Works, Kelsey Street Press, the Jargon Society,

Dalkey Archive Press Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...

, Wave Books, Farrar Straus Giroux, Black Square Editions,

City Lights Books City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected ti ...

, and

MOCAD The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) is a non-collecting contemporary art museum located in Detroit. MOCAD is housed in a building, a converted former auto dealership designed by architect Andrew Zago. The architecture of the building ...

(Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit). He also designs the covers for ''Two Lines'', the literary journal from the

Center for the Art of Translation Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricit ...

. In January 2008, ''Publishers Weekly'' wrote: "Clark has become one of poetry's most prolific and influential book designers, whose distinctive treatments—characterized by spacious covers; hip, angular fonts; varied elements that elide into one another—a frequent poetry reader could recognize from a distance."Craig Morgan Teicher
"A Poet's Cover,"
''Publishers Weekly,'' January 28, 2008.

References

External links

Crisis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clark, Jeff 1971 births American male poets University of California, Davis alumni People from Ypsilanti, Michigan Living people Book designers 21st-century American poets 21st-century American male writers