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Carolyn Forché

March 08, 2023

Carolyn Forché (born April 28, 1950) is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate.[1] She has received many awards for her literary work.

Carolyn Forché
Forché announcing the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award finalists in poetry
Born (1950-04-28) April 28, 1950 (age 72)
Detroit, Michigan
United States
Occupation
  • Poet
  • columnist
  • essayist
  • lyricist
EducationMichigan State University
Bowling Green State University

Biography

Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a bacherlor's degree in Creative Writing at Michigan State University in 1972, and Master of Fine Arts at Bowling Green State University in 1975.[2]

She has taught at a number of universities, including Bowling Green State University,[3] Michigan State University, the University of Virginia, Skidmore College, Columbia University, San Diego State University and in the Master of Fine Arts program at George Mason University.

Forché is a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University,[4] and has received honorary doctorates from the University of Scranton,[5] the California Institute of the Arts, Marquette University,[6] Russell Sage University, and Sierra Nevada College.[7] She was Director of Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, and held the Lannan Visiting Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where she is now a University Professor.[8] She is co-chair, with Gloria Steinem, of the Creative Advisory Council of Hedgebrook, a residency for women writers on Whidbey Island.[9] She lives in Maryland with her husband, Harry Mattison, a photographer, whom she married in 1984. Their son is Sean-Christophe Mattison.

Career

Awards and publications

Forché's first poetry collection, Gathering the Tribes (1976), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, leading to publication by Yale University Press.[10] After her 1977 trip to Spain in which she translated the work of Salvadoran-exiled poet Claribel Alegría as well as the works of Georg Trakl and Mahmoud Darwish, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled her to travel to El Salvador, where she worked as a human rights advocate, mentored by Leonel Gómez Vides.

Her second book, The Country Between Us (1981), published with the help of Margaret Atwood, received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was also the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Forché has held three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1992 received a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship.[11] Additional awards include the Robert Creeley Award,[12] the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture, and the Denise Levertov Award.[8]

Her anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, was published in 1993, and her third book of poetry, The Angel of History (1994), was chosen for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her works include the famed poem The Colonel (The Country Between Us). She is also a trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize.[13] Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation,[14] Esquire, Mother Jones, Boston Review,[15] and others.

Her fourth book of poems, Blue Hour, was released in 2003. Other books include a memoir, The Horse on Our Balcony (2010, HarperCollins); a book of essays (2011, HarperCollins); a memoir about her time in El Salvador, What you have Heard Is True (2019, Penguin Press); and a fifth collection of poems, In the Lateness of the World (Bloodaxe Books, 2020).

In October 2019 What You Have Heard is True was named a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.[16] Her 2019 book What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance won the 2019 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America.

Readings and translations

Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (2003), Claribel Alegría's Sorrow (1999), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, for the Modern English Poetry Series, 1991).[8] She has given poetry readings in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Belarus, Finland, Sweden, Republic of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Libya, Japan, Colombia, Mexico and Canada. Her poetry books have been translated into Swedish, German and Spanish. Individual poems have been translated into more than twenty other languages.

Writing perspective

Although Forché is sometimes described as a political poet, she considers herself a poet who is politically engaged. After the publication of her second book, The Country Between Us, which included poems describing what she had personally experienced in El Salvador at the beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War, she responded to controversy concerning whether or not her work had become “political,” by researching and writing about poetry written in the aftermath of extremity in the 20th century. She proposed that such works not be read as narrowly “political” but rather as “poetry of witness." Her own aesthetic is more one of rendered experienced and at times of mysticism rather than one of ideology or agitprop.

Forché is particularly interested in the effect of political trauma on the poet's use of language. The anthology Against Forgetting was intended to collect the work of poets who had endured the impress of extremity during the 20th century, whether through their engagements or force of circumstance. These experiences included warfare, military occupation, imprisonment, torture, forced exile, censorship, and house arrest. The anthology, composed of the work of one hundred and forty-five poets writing in English and translated from over thirty languages, begins with the Armenian Genocide and ends with the uprising of the pro-Democracy movement at Tiananmen Square. Although she was not guided in her selections by the political or ideological persuasions of the poets, Forché believes the sharing of painful experience to be radicalizing, returning the poet to an emphasis on community rather than the individual ego. In this she was influenced by Terrence des Pres, Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas.[17]

Forché is also influenced by her Slovak family background, particularly the life story of her grandmother, an immigrant whose family included a woman resistance fighter imprisoned during the Nazi occupation of former Czechoslovakia. Forché was raised Roman Catholic and religious themes are frequent in her work.

Bibliography

 
Carolyn Forché at Georgetown University in 2012.

Published books

  • Women in American Labor History, 1825-1935: An Annotated Bibliography (Michigan State University, 1972), with Martha Jane Soltow and Murray Massre
  • Gathering the Tribes (Yale University Press, 1976), ISBN 0-300-01983-1
  • History and Motivations of U.S. Involvement in the Control of the Peasant Movement in El Salvador: The Role of AIFLD in the Agrarian Reform Process, 1970-1980 (EPICA, 1980), with Philip Wheaton
  • The Country Between Us (Harper & Row, USA, 1981, ISBN 0-06-014955-8; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2019 ISBN 978-1-78037-374-4)
  • El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers (W.W. Norton, 1983), ISBN 0-86316-063-8
  • Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (W.W. Norton, 1993), ISBN 0-393-03372-4 (ed.)
  • The Angel of History (HarperCollins, USA, 1994 ISBN 0-06-017078-6; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 1994 ISBN 978-1-85224-307-4)
  • Writing Creative nonfiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs (Story Press, 2001), ISBN 1-884910-50-5 (ed. with Philip Gerard)
  • Blue Hour (HarperCollins, USA, 2003; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2003 ISBN 978-1-85224-618-1)
  • Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2014)
  • What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press, 2019)
  • In The Lateness of The World: Poems (Penguin Press, USA, 2020; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2020 ISBN 978-1-85224-964-9)

In other media

Forché appeared in the Ken Burns Oscar-nominated documentary The Statue of Liberty in 1985.[18]

In November 2013, Forché was interviewed as both scholar and poet for the documentary Poetry of Witness, directed by independent filmmakers Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo.

References

  1. ^ [1] January 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Carolyn Forché". Poets.org. Retrieved 2013-09-24.
  3. ^ "Carolyn Forché's Teaching Philosophy". Modern American Poetry. Retrieved January 14, 2012.
  4. ^ "Faculty Profile". www.chapman.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  5. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients | Office of the President | About Us". www.scranton.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  6. ^ "Carolyn Forché | University Honors | Marquette University". www.marquette.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  7. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients". University of Scranton.
  8. ^ a b c "Carolyn Forché". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2018-03-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  9. ^ Hedgebrook (2014-12-16). "Creative Advisory Council". hedgebrook.org. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  10. ^ In 1991, the writer Steve Cannon named his newly-incorporated multicultural arts organization (which would eventually include a gallery and a literary magazine) A Gathering of the Tribes, acknowledging Forche's inspiration. See http://www.placematters.net/node/1789 2016-04-15 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ McDowell, Edwin (September 16, 1990). "Arts Foundation Awards $35,000 to 6 Authors". The New York Times.
  12. ^ . Robert Creeley Foundation. Archived from the original on 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2013-09-24.
  13. ^ . Griffin Poetry Prize. Archived from the original on 2013-09-28. Retrieved 2013-09-24.
  14. ^ "Carolyn Forché". The Nation. Retrieved 2013-09-24.
  15. ^ [2] May 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ "The 2019 National Book Awards Finalists Announced". National Book Foundation. 2019-10-07. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  17. ^ "Carolyn Forché's Life and Career". Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois. Retrieved 2013-09-24.
  18. ^ Schur, Joan Brodsky (2002). The Statue of Liberty: For Educators. WETA, 2002. Retrieved on 2013-07-02 from https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/statueofliberty/educators/.

External links

  • Modern American Poetry - An Interview with Carolyn Forché by David Wright
  • Carolyn Forché: Poems and Profile at Poets.org
  • Speech on Why Poetry? delivered at the 2009 Reykjavik International Literary Festival
  • , Opus 40
  • "Carolyn Forché", Blue Flower Arts

March 08, 2023
carolyn, forché, born, april, 1950, american, poet, editor, professor, translator, human, rights, advocate, received, many, awards, literary, work, forché, announcing, 2010, national, book, critics, circle, award, finalists, poetryborn, 1950, april, 1950, detr. Carolyn Forche born April 28 1950 is an American poet editor professor translator and human rights advocate 1 She has received many awards for her literary work Carolyn ForcheForche announcing the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award finalists in poetryBorn 1950 04 28 April 28 1950 age 72 Detroit MichiganUnited StatesOccupationPoet columnist essayist lyricistEducationMichigan State University Bowling Green State University Contents 1 Biography 2 Career 2 1 Awards and publications 2 2 Readings and translations 2 3 Writing perspective 3 Bibliography 3 1 Published books 4 In other media 5 References 6 External linksBiography EditForche was born in Detroit Michigan to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky Forche earned a bacherlor s degree in Creative Writing at Michigan State University in 1972 and Master of Fine Arts at Bowling Green State University in 1975 2 She has taught at a number of universities including Bowling Green State University 3 Michigan State University the University of Virginia Skidmore College Columbia University San Diego State University and in the Master of Fine Arts program at George Mason University Forche is a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University 4 and has received honorary doctorates from the University of Scranton 5 the California Institute of the Arts Marquette University 6 Russell Sage University and Sierra Nevada College 7 She was Director of Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice and held the Lannan Visiting Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University Washington DC where she is now a University Professor 8 She is co chair with Gloria Steinem of the Creative Advisory Council of Hedgebrook a residency for women writers on Whidbey Island 9 She lives in Maryland with her husband Harry Mattison a photographer whom she married in 1984 Their son is Sean Christophe Mattison Career EditAwards and publications Edit Forche s first poetry collection Gathering the Tribes 1976 won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition leading to publication by Yale University Press 10 After her 1977 trip to Spain in which she translated the work of Salvadoran exiled poet Claribel Alegria as well as the works of Georg Trakl and Mahmoud Darwish she received a Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled her to travel to El Salvador where she worked as a human rights advocate mentored by Leonel Gomez Vides Her second book The Country Between Us 1981 published with the help of Margaret Atwood received the Poetry Society of America s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and was also the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets Forche has held three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1992 received a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship 11 Additional awards include the Robert Creeley Award 12 the Windham Campbell Prize the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture and the Denise Levertov Award 8 Her anthology Against Forgetting Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness was published in 1993 and her third book of poetry The Angel of History 1994 was chosen for the Los Angeles Times Book Award Her works include the famed poem The Colonel The Country Between Us She is also a trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize 13 Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times The Washington Post The Nation 14 Esquire Mother Jones Boston Review 15 and others Her fourth book of poems Blue Hour was released in 2003 Other books include a memoir The Horse on Our Balcony 2010 HarperCollins a book of essays 2011 HarperCollins a memoir about her time in El Salvador What you have Heard Is True 2019 Penguin Press and a fifth collection of poems In the Lateness of the World Bloodaxe Books 2020 In October 2019 What You Have Heard is True was named a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction 16 Her 2019 book What You Have Heard is True A Memoir of Witness and Resistance won the 2019 Juan E Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America Readings and translations Edit Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish s Unfortunately It Was Paradise Selected Poems 2003 Claribel Alegria s Sorrow 1999 and Robert Desnos s Selected Poetry with William Kulik for the Modern English Poetry Series 1991 8 She has given poetry readings in France Spain Germany Italy Russia Czech Republic Slovakia Bulgaria Romania Lithuania Belarus Finland Sweden Republic of South Africa Zimbabwe Libya Japan Colombia Mexico and Canada Her poetry books have been translated into Swedish German and Spanish Individual poems have been translated into more than twenty other languages Writing perspective Edit Although Forche is sometimes described as a political poet she considers herself a poet who is politically engaged After the publication of her second book The Country Between Us which included poems describing what she had personally experienced in El Salvador at the beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War she responded to controversy concerning whether or not her work had become political by researching and writing about poetry written in the aftermath of extremity in the 20th century She proposed that such works not be read as narrowly political but rather as poetry of witness Her own aesthetic is more one of rendered experienced and at times of mysticism rather than one of ideology or agitprop Forche is particularly interested in the effect of political trauma on the poet s use of language The anthology Against Forgetting was intended to collect the work of poets who had endured the impress of extremity during the 20th century whether through their engagements or force of circumstance These experiences included warfare military occupation imprisonment torture forced exile censorship and house arrest The anthology composed of the work of one hundred and forty five poets writing in English and translated from over thirty languages begins with the Armenian Genocide and ends with the uprising of the pro Democracy movement at Tiananmen Square Although she was not guided in her selections by the political or ideological persuasions of the poets Forche believes the sharing of painful experience to be radicalizing returning the poet to an emphasis on community rather than the individual ego In this she was influenced by Terrence des Pres Hannah Arendt Martin Buber Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas 17 Forche is also influenced by her Slovak family background particularly the life story of her grandmother an immigrant whose family included a woman resistance fighter imprisoned during the Nazi occupation of former Czechoslovakia Forche was raised Roman Catholic and religious themes are frequent in her work Bibliography Edit Carolyn Forche at Georgetown University in 2012 Published books Edit Women in American Labor History 1825 1935 An Annotated Bibliography Michigan State University 1972 with Martha Jane Soltow and Murray Massre Gathering the Tribes Yale University Press 1976 ISBN 0 300 01983 1 History and Motivations of U S Involvement in the Control of the Peasant Movement in El Salvador The Role of AIFLD in the Agrarian Reform Process 1970 1980 EPICA 1980 with Philip Wheaton The Country Between Us Harper amp Row USA 1981 ISBN 0 06 014955 8 Bloodaxe Books UK 2019 ISBN 978 1 78037 374 4 El Salvador Work of Thirty Photographers W W Norton 1983 ISBN 0 86316 063 8 Against Forgetting Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness W W Norton 1993 ISBN 0 393 03372 4 ed The Angel of History HarperCollins USA 1994 ISBN 0 06 017078 6 Bloodaxe Books UK 1994 ISBN 978 1 85224 307 4 Writing Creative nonfiction Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs Story Press 2001 ISBN 1 884910 50 5 ed with Philip Gerard Blue Hour HarperCollins USA 2003 Bloodaxe Books UK 2003 ISBN 978 1 85224 618 1 Poetry of Witness The Tradition in English 1500 2001 W W Norton amp Co 2014 What You Have Heard Is True A Memoir of Witness and Resistance Penguin Press 2019 In The Lateness of The World Poems Penguin Press USA 2020 Bloodaxe Books UK 2020 ISBN 978 1 85224 964 9 In other media EditForche appeared in the Ken Burns Oscar nominated documentary The Statue of Liberty in 1985 18 In November 2013 Forche was interviewed as both scholar and poet for the documentary Poetry of Witness directed by independent filmmakers Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo References Edit 1 Archived January 18 2011 at the Wayback Machine Carolyn Forche Poets org Retrieved 2013 09 24 Carolyn Forche s Teaching Philosophy Modern American Poetry Retrieved January 14 2012 Faculty Profile www chapman edu Retrieved 2018 10 30 Honorary Degree Recipients Office of the President About Us www scranton edu Retrieved 2018 10 30 Carolyn Forche University Honors Marquette University www marquette edu Retrieved 2018 10 30 Honorary Degree Recipients University of Scranton a b c Carolyn Forche Poetry Foundation Poetry Foundation 2018 03 26 Retrieved 2018 03 26 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint others link Hedgebrook 2014 12 16 Creative Advisory Council hedgebrook org Retrieved 2018 10 30 In 1991 the writer Steve Cannon named his newly incorporated multicultural arts organization which would eventually include a gallery and a literary magazine A Gathering of the Tribes acknowledging Forche s inspiration See http www placematters net node 1789 Archived 2016 04 15 at the Wayback Machine McDowell Edwin September 16 1990 Arts Foundation Awards 35 000 to 6 Authors The New York Times About Carolyn Forche Robert Creeley Foundation Archived from the original on 2012 03 17 Retrieved 2013 09 24 The Griffin Trust Trustees Griffin Poetry Prize Archived from the original on 2013 09 28 Retrieved 2013 09 24 Carolyn Forche The Nation Retrieved 2013 09 24 2 Archived May 11 2011 at the Wayback Machine The 2019 National Book Awards Finalists Announced National Book Foundation 2019 10 07 Retrieved 2019 10 09 Carolyn Forche s Life and Career Modern American Poetry University of Illinois Retrieved 2013 09 24 Schur Joan Brodsky 2002 The Statue of Liberty For Educators WETA 2002 Retrieved on 2013 07 02 from https www pbs org kenburns statueofliberty educators External links EditModern American Poetry An Interview with Carolyn Forche by David Wright An Interview with Carolyn Forche by Christopher Nelson Carolyn Forche Poems and Profile at Poets org Speech on Why Poetry delivered at the 2009 Reykjavik International Literary Festival CAROLYN FORCHE 1950 Opus 40 Carolyn Forche Blue Flower Arts Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Carolyn Forche amp oldid 1119422125, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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