Peter Johnson (b. 1951
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
) is an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
, and
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
.
Life
He received his B.A. from the
State University of New York at Buffalo
The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...
, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the
University of New Hampshire
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, m ...
.
His poems and fiction have appeared in ''Field'', ''Denver Quarterly'', ''The Iowa Review'', ''Indiana Review'', ''Quarterly West'', ''North Dakota Quarterly'', ''The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry'', and ''Beloit Fiction Journal''.
Johnson is the founder and editor of'' The Prose Poem: An International Journal'', and the editor of ''The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal'' (White Pine Press, 2000). He is contributing editor to ''American Poetry Review'', ''Web del Sol'', and ''Slope'', and teaches creative writing and children's literature at
Providence College,
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...
, where he lives with his wife, Genevieve, and two sons, Kurt and Lucas.
Awards
He is the winner of the 2001
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 ...
for his second collection of prose poems, ''Miracles & Mortifications'' (2001). He received a creative writing award in 2002 from Rhode Council on the Arts and a fellowship in 1999 from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Works
"Just Listen", poets.org"Hell", ''pith''
Poetry books
*
*
*
Chapbooks
*
*
Novel
*
*
Short stories
* ''I'm a Man'' (2003).
Review
About his work, the poet
Bruce Smith
Bruce Bernard Smith (born June 18, 1963) is an American former football defensive end who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 19 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills. He played college football at Virginia Tech, where he was ...
has said:
Because Peter Johnson does not guide himself either by the turns and counterturns of verse or the horizontal urge of prose, he must continually reinvent the wheel and its destination. He writes with a lover's lavish extravagance and a yogi's self-discipline. His funny poems are heartbreaking and his serious ones are hilarious.
References
External links
Archived webpage on Peter Johnson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Peter
1951 births
Living people
American male poets
University of New Hampshire alumni
Writers from Buffalo, New York
University at Buffalo alumni