DICK DAVIS

Rhyme
Dick Davis was born in Portsmouth, England, (1945), and educated at the universities of Cambridge (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature) and Manchester (PhD. in Medieval Persian Literature). He is currently Professor of Persian and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University. He lived for eight years in Iran, as well as for periods in Greece and Italy. His twenty-one books include academic works, translations from Italian (prose) and Persian (prose and verse), and books of poetry. His most recent book of poetry is A Trick of Sunlight, Swallow/Ohio (2006).

DANA GIOIA

Blank Verse   

Poet, critic, and best-selling anthologist, Dana Gioia is one of America 's leading contemporary men of letters. Winner of the American Book Award, Gioia is internationally recognized for his role in reviving rhyme, meter, and narrative in contemporary poetry. He has published three full-length books of poetry including Daily Horoscope (1986); The Gods of Winter (1991), chosen by London 's Poetry Society Book Club as its main selection; and Interrogations at Noon (2001), winner of the American Book Award. Gioia's critical collection, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992/2002) was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the “Best Books of 1992.” Gioia's poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review. He is also a longtime commentator on American culture and literature for BBC Radio. Author of the libretto for Nosferatu (2001), an opera created with composer Alva Henderson, Gioia's poem, “The End,” was recently set to music by award-winning composer Ned Rorem. In February 2003 Gioia was appointed by President George W. Bush as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. A native of California, he lives in Washington with his wife, Mary, and their two sons.

RACHEL HADAS

Dramatic Monologue

H.L. HIX                                                                  Experimental Form                                                                   H. L. Hix teaches at the University of Wyoming. His recent books from Etruscan Press include a collection of essays on poetry, As Easy As Lying, an anthology, Wild and Whirling Words, a poetry collection, Chromatic, that was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, and God Bless, a “political/poetic discourse” built around sonnets and sestinas and villanelles composed of quotations from George W. Bush.

ANDREW HUDGINS                                                         Master Class

DAVID MASON  

Master Class

David Mason’s books include The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Poetry Society of America’s DiCastagnola Award), Arrivals, and a collection of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry.  His verse novel, Ludlow, won the Colorado Book Award and was named “Best New Poetry Book” by The Contemporary Poetry Review. With Mark Jarman he co-edited Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism. With the late John Frederick Nims he co-edited Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry (fifth edition 2005). And with Dana Gioia and Meg Schoerke he co-edited both Twentieth Century American Poetry and Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. He teaches at The Colorado College.

CHELSEA RATHBURN

Writing and Revising in Form

Chelsea Rathburn is the author of Unused Lines (Aralia Press, 2004) and The Shifting Line (University of Evansville Press, 2005), which won the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, and The Cincinnati Review, among other journals and anthologies, and her honors include a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Miami, Florida, she currently lives in Atlanta.

TIMOTHY STEELE 
Meter
Timothy Steele's most recent book of poems is Toward the Winter Solstice. His previous collections include The Color Wheel and Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970—1986. He is also the author of two books of literary criticism, Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and The Revolt Against Meter and All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a Commonwealth Club of California Medal for Poetry. He lives in Los Angeles where he teaches at California State University.

DIANE THIEL

The Poetic Line

LISA WILLIAMS

Narrative

Lisa Williams is the author of Woman Reading to the Sea (W.W. Norton, 2008), which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and The Hammered Dulcimer (Utah State University Press, 1998), which won the May Swenson Poetry Award. Williams was awarded the Rome Prize in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, where she was awarded a Henry Hoynes fellowship in poetry and an Academy of American Poets Prize. She received a M.A. from the University of Cincinnati, where she was awarded an Elliston Poetry Fellowship and the Elliston Poetry Prize. Williams' poems have recently appeared in The Southwest Review, Poetry, Raritan, The Cincinnati Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Measure, and other magazines, as well as in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to Present, and on Poetry Daily. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, she is Associate Professor of English at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.