Juliana Spahr (born 1966) 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 ...

, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the

Folger Shakespeare Library The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materi ...

to honor a U.S. poet whose art and teaching demonstrate great imagination and daring. Both Spahr's critical and scholarly studies, i.e., ''Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity'' (2001), and her poetry have shown Spahr's commitment to fostering a "value of reading" as a communal, democratic, open process. Her work therefore "distinguishes itself because she writes poems for which her critical work calls." In addition to teaching and writing poetry, Spahr is also an active editor.O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize: Juliana Spahr
note that the 2009 judges were

Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine (; born September 4, 1963) is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Her book of poetry, '' Citizen: An American L ...

and Joshua Weiner. Spahr received the National Poetry Series Award for her first collection of poetry, ''Response'' (1996).

Life

Born and raised in Chillicothe,

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, Spahr received her BA from

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...

and her PhD from the

University at Buffalo, The State University of New York 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 ...

in English. She has taught at Siena College (1996–7), the

University of Hawaii at Manoa A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

(1997–2003), and

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

(2003–). With Jena Osman, she edited the arts journal ''Chain'' from 1993 to 2003. In 2012, Spahr co-edited ''A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism'' with Mills colleague and fellow-poet Stephanie Young.

Activism

Spahr's participation in the 2011 Occupy Movement is chronicled in her 2015 book '' That Winter The Wolf Came''. According to Spahr, she spent time in the encampments and participated in protests, although she and her son "never spent the night." Her work examines social issues, including the repercussions of the BP oil spill, the global impact of 9/11,

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

, and

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

. She uses poetry as a mechanism to provide cultural recognition and representation to social movements and political actions. Following the

Occupy Movement The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of "real democracy" around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and econo ...

, the police shootings of

Oscar Grant Oscar Grant III was a 22-year-old African-American man who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. Responding to reports of a fight on a crowded Bay Area Rapid ...

Eric Garner On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed in the New York City borough of Staten Island after Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, put him in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him. Video footage of the incide ...

, and Mike Brown, and the 2009 California college tuition hike protests, Spahr founded the publishing project Commune Editions, along with Jasper Bernes and

Joshua Clover Joshua Clover (born December 30, 1962 in Berkeley, California) is a writer and a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Davis. He is a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been t ...

. The project was founded with the intention to publish poetry as a companion to political action.

Bibliography

Poetry

*''Nuclear'' (Leave Books, 1994) �
full text
*''Response'' (Sun & Moon Press, 1996) �

*''Spiderwasp or Literary Criticism'' (Explosive Books, 1998) *'' Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) *''Things of Each Possible Relation Hashing Against One Another'' (Newfield, NY: Palm Press, 2003) *''This Connection of Everyone With Lungs'' (University of California Press, 2005) *''Well Then There Now'' (Black Sparrow Press, 2011) *''That Winter The Wolf Came'' (Commune Editions, 2015)

Fiction

*''An Army of Lovers'' with David Buuck, *''The Transformation'' (

Berkeley, CA Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emery ...

: Atelos Press, 2007)

Criticism

*''Everybody's Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity'' (University of Alabama Press, 2001) * ''Du Bois's Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment'' (Harvard University Press, 2018)

Editor

*''Writing from the New Coast: Technique'' (essay collection) Co-editor with Peter Gizzi. (Stockbridge: O-blek Editions, 1993) *''A Poetics of Criticism'' (essay collection) Co-editor with

Mark Wallace Mark David Wallace (born December 31, 1967) is an American businessman, former diplomat and lawyer who has served in a variety of government, political and private sector posts. He served in several positions during the administration of Presi ...

, Kristin Prevallet, and Pam Rehm. (Buffalo: Leave Books, 1993) *''Chain'' Jena_Osman_.html" ;"title="o-edited with Jena Osman ">o-edited with Jena Osman since 199
full text
*''American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language'' [co-edited with

], (Wesleyan University Press, 2002) *''Poetry and Pedagogy: the Challenge of the Contemporary'' [co-edited with Joan Retallack ], (Palgrave, 2006) *''A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism'' o-edited with Stephanie Young (ChainLinks, 2011)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spahr, Juliana Living people Bard College alumni 1966 births People from Chillicothe, Ohio University at Buffalo alumni American women poets Poets from Ohio 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Siena College faculty University of Hawaiʻi faculty Mills College faculty American women academics