WEBVTT

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In '73 in San
Francisco, and grew up

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in the Bay Area attending high
school in the Haight-Ashbury.

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When she was in eighth grade she
won a poetry contest sponsored

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by the rock band, The Cure.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Encouraged by this
early success,

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she has been writing
poetry ever since.

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She graduated from
Wesleyan in 1994.

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Her poems have appeared in Ms.,
New American Writing, Hanging

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Loose, and other publications,
as well as in the chapbook

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Pacific, published by
Orchard Street Press in '95.

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A collection with poet Cynthia
Nelson titled Not Sisters,

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from Soft Skull Press in 1993.

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Her manuscript, The
Scratch-Scratch Diaries

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was recently featured in an
Agni Graywolf press publication:

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Take Three: New Poet Series.

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She lives in New
York where she's

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worked as an assistant editor
for Best American Poetry

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as well as working as a
waitress, a bartender,

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and a modern dancer.

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She's currently working
on a PhD in English.

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Nelson's poems are urban,
edgy, and mercurial.

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The world is constantly
changing shape, she writes.

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And her poems are so
formally controlled

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that they see a-- they
seem a stay against change,

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yet so shifting and
at play that they

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seem an embodiment of change.

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She writes a spare and
energetic short lined

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poem filled with the real
places and people of her day.

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A poem that has many of
the virtues of Creeley.

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So condensed that the
music of the words jumps.

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Of her work, Creeley
has said, "Maggie Nelson

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brings a deft and unflagging
wit to her writing.

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And her powers of
invention never quit.

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I love the way all she says
keeps moving, insistent, often

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abrasive like they say,
and always specific."

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Can it get any better?

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I don't think so.

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Please welcome Maggie Nelson.

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[APPLAUSE]

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