Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel Mackey, photo by Gloria Graham during the video taping of Add-Verse, 2005
Born 1947
Miami, Florida
Citizenship American
Alma mater Princeton University;
Stanford University
Genre Poetry

Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teaching a poetry workshop at Duke University.

He has been editor and publisher of Hambone since 1982 and he won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006.[1] In 2014, he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize,[2] and in 2015 he won Yale's Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.[3]

Biography

Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He obtained his B.A. from Princeton University and his PhD from Stanford University. He taught and lived in Santa Cruz from 1979 to 2010. He is currently a professor at Duke University.

Poetry

Mackey's books of poetry include Four for Trane (1978); Septet for the End of Time (1983); Eroding Witness (1985), which was selected for the National Poetry Series; Outlandish (1992); School of Udhra (1993); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); Whatsaid Serif (1998); Splay Anthem (2006) and a chapbook Outer Pradesh (2014).

"...Mackey's series of improvisatory jazz-inspired fictions locates a ground between invention and listening that he defines as the source of culture itself. All culture, for Mackey, is a form of listening to what "we" are collectively improvising."
Barrett Watten[4]

Mackey's poetry combines African mythology, African-American musical traditions, and Modernist poetic experiment. His several ongoing serial projects explore the relationship of poetry and historical memory, as well as the ritual power of poetry and song.

Fiction

Mackey has published four volumes of an ongoing prose project entitled, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Bass Cathedral (2008), Atet A. D. (2001), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993) and Bedouin Hornbook (1986).

Criticism and editing

Mackey is the author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993), an influential book of literary theory, and more recently of Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (2004). He has edited the avant-garde literary journal Hambone for more than 15 years, and co-edited Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose with Art Lange(1993).

Awards

Resources

  1. 1 2 "National Book Awards – 2006". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
    (With acceptance speech by Mackey, essay by Megan Snyder-Camp from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog, and other materials.)
  2. Charles, Ron (May 7, 2014). "Nathaniel Mackey wins $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize". The Washington Post. Retrieved 10 May 2014.
  3. 1 2 "Nathaniel Mackey wins Yale’s 2015 Bollingen Prize for Poetry" Yale News. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  4. One Year Plan: Post 36: 7/17/07 Watten's piece is called: "Great Books 1–10 + 2: Thumbnail Algorithms"

External links

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