Robert Wrigley (born 1951 in
East St. Louis, Illinois) is an American poet and educator.
Biography
In 1971 Wrigley was inducted into the
army, filing for discharge as a
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...
. He received his M.F.A. in Poetry from the
University of Montana in 1976, where he studied under poets
Richard Hugo,
Madeline DeFrees, and
John Haines. From 1987 to 1988 he served as writer-in-residence for the state of
Idaho, and has received fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Idaho State Commission on the Arts, and the
Guggenheim Foundation.
His poems have been published in a number of journals, including ''
Poetry'', ''
The Atlantic'', ''
Barrow Street'', and ''
The New Yorker''. In 2003 and 2006 he had poems published in ''
Best American Poetry'', and in 2013, his poem "Religion" appeared in ''The Best of the Best American Poetry: 25th Anniversary Edition'', selected by
Robert Pinsky. Wrigley is also the recipient of seven
Pushcart Prize
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...
s. ''Reign of Snakes'' won the
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the U ...
; ''Lives of the Animals'' won the 2005
Poets' Prize. ''In the Bank of Beautiful Sins'' won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award. ''Box'' won a 2017 Pacific Northwest Book Award.
Wrigley retired from teaching (in 2016) at the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the
University of Idaho, where his wife,
Kim Barnes, a memoirist and writer, also taught until her retirement in 2020.
Bibliography
* ''The Sinking of Clay City'' (1979)
* ''The Glow'' (1982) (chapbook)
* Three broadsides - "The Beliefs of a Horse", "A Preference in Birds", "Surfaces" (1984)
* ''Moon in a Mason Jar'' (1986)
* ''In the Dark Pool'' (1987) (chapbook)
* ''What My Father Believed'' (1991)
* ''In the Bank of Beautiful Sins'' (1995)
* ''Reign of Snakes'' (1999)
* ''Clemency'' (2002) (chapbook)
* ''Lives of the Animals'' (2003)
* ''Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems'' (
Penguin Group, 2006)
* ''Beautiful Country'' (2010)
* ''After a Rainstorm'' (2010)
* ''Anatomy of Melancholy & Other Poems'' (2013)
* ''The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems'' (2013, UK)
* ''Box'' (2017)
* ''Nemerov's Door: Essays'' (2021)
* ''The True Account of Myself As a Bird'' (2022)
References
External links
robertwrigley.comPoetry Foundation: Robert Wrigley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wrigley, Robert
American male poets
University of Montana alumni
University of Idaho faculty
Living people
Poets Laureate of Idaho
1951 births