Founded at Mercer University in 1985, the Georgia Poetry Circuit is a consortium of 10 Georgia colleges and universities working together to bring three poets of national and international repute to all member campuses each year. This provides important access to the literary arts for Georgia residents across the state.
At each school, each circuit poet gives a free and open reading of his/her work. Visiting poets also meet with creative writing students at each campus for workshops, talks or extended question-and-answer sessions. In addition to the opportunity to hear work from diverse writers, circuit events provide Georgia students with an immensely valuable educational opportunity for interaction with excellent contemporary poets in the United States.
Nov. 10, 2020, 12:30 p.m.
Tiana Clark
Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award (Claremont Graduate University), a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, a recipient of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, a winner of the 2017 Furious Flower’s Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She was the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. Clark is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.
She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A.) and Tennessee State University (B.A.), where she studied Africana and Women’s studies. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Washington Post, VQR, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Oxford American, Best New Poets 2015, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
February 8, 2021, 12:30 p.m.
Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang has received degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Stanford University, as well as an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She is the author of OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2018 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America; Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017); and The Boss (McSweeney’s, 2013), winner of a PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award, among others.
Chang is also the author of the middle grade novel in verse Love, Love (Sterling Children’s Books, 2020) and the picture book Is Mommy? (Beach Lane Books, 2015), illustrated by Marla Frazee, as well as the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Chang, who received a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship, serves as a contributing editor of Copper Nickel and a poetry editor of Tupelo Quarterly. Chang also serves on the National Book Critics Circle Board. She teaches in the MFA program at Antioch University and co-coordinates the Idyllwild Writers Week. She was the Poem-a-Day Guest Editor for May 2019, and lives in Southern California.
April 6, 2021, 12:30 p.m.
David Kirby
Poet, critic, and scholar David Kirby grew up on a farm in southern Louisiana. He received a BA from Louisiana State University and, at the age of 24, a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Influenced by artists as diverse as John Keats and Little Richard, Kirby writes distinctive long-lined narrative poems that braid together high and popular culture, personal memory, philosophy, and humor.
Kirby is the author of more than two dozen volumes of criticism, essays, children’s literature, pedagogy, and poetry. His numerous collections of poetry include The Ha-Ha (2003), short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and The House on Boulevard Street: New and Selected Poems (2007), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Florida Book Award and the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Award.
Kirby has also won several Pushcart Prizes, the Guy Owen Prize, the Kay Deeter Award, the James Dickey Prize, the Brittingham Prize, and the Millennium Cultural Recognition Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Florida Arts Council. His poetry has been featured in numerous anthologies, including several issues of Best American Poetry.
Kirby is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Since 1969 he has taught at Florida State University, where he has received several teaching awards. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, poet Barbara Hamby.
