Colette Inez

Colette Inez
Inez reading her poetry at Juilliard
Born	Colette Inez 1931 Brussels, Belgium
Residence	New York, NY, United States
Alma mater	Hunter College
Occupation	poet, academic
Employer	Columbia University (1983-present)

Colette Inez (born 1931) is an American poet and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She has published ten poetry collections and has won the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA Fellowships) and two Prizes and many other awards. Her memoir, The Secret of M. Dulong, was released in 2008 by The University of Wisconsin Press.^[1]

Early life and education

Born as the love child of a French scholar and a French-American priest in Brussels, Colette Inez spent her early years in a Belgian Catholic orphanage, arriving in America as a pretended orphan at age eight at the start of World War II. Her adolescence was spent the foster care of an alcoholic and abusive family in Long Island, New York.^[2][3]

She graduated from Hunter College.

Career

Sidelights, angels, fifes and harps
Aha, aha
it's no ordinary morning
Brother Love has gone for logs...
("Gospels in the Drifts")

Colette Inez ^[4]

Her first book, The Woman Who Loved Worms (1972), was adapted into a dance performance by the Saeko Ichinohe Dance Company. Five of her poems were used as the lyrics of a song cycle, Miz Inez Sez, featured on Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Del Tredici’s album Secret Music (2002):^[2] "Alive and Taking Names," "The Happy Child," "Good News! Nilda is Back," and "Chateauneuf du Pape, the Pope's Valet Speaks" (all from her 1993 collection Getting Under Way: New and Selected Poems), as well as "The Beckoning" (first published in the New Orleans Review in 1999).

She has taught at Bucknell University, Ohio University, Denison University, State University of New York (Stony Brook), Hunter College, University of Tennessee (Knoxville), The New School and started teaching at Columbia University in 1983 starting the Columbia University School of General Studies and subsequently as a lecturer in the university's Undergraduate Writing Program.

Works

• The Woman Who Loved Worms, Doubleday, 1972.
• Alive and Taking Names. Ohio University Press, 1977.
• Eight Minutes from the Sun. Saturday Press, 1983.
• Family Life, Story Line Press, 1992
• Getting Underway: New & Selected Poetry, Story Line Press, 1993.
• Naming the Moons. Press of Appletree Alley, 1994.
• Clemency', Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998.
• Spinoza Doesn't Come Here Anymore, Melville House Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-0-9749609-1-3.
• The Secret of M. Dulong, University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. ISBN 0-299-21420-6.Excerpts
• For Reasons of Music ^[5]

Awards

• 1985: Guggenheim Fellowship ^[6]
• Rockefeller Fellowship
• NEA Fellowship (twice)
• The Pushcart Prize (twice)
• The Poetry Society of America (three)
• New York Foundation for the Arts
• New York State CAPS Fellowship

References

1. Colette Inez Profile and Works Poets & Writers website.
2. Colette Inez Poetry Foundation.
3. The Secret of M. Dulong: A Memoir University of Wisconsin Press.
4. The Poetry Worm: A Portrait of Colette Inez by Dennis Bernstein Tulane University website.
5. Colette Inez Open Library.
6. All Fellows: Colette Inez- 1985- Creative Arts-Poetry John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website.

External links

• Colette Inez Page at Columbia University
• Colette Inez, Biography and Poems at Poetry Foundation
• The Poetry Worm: A Portrait of Colette Inez by Dennis Bernstein at Tulane University