I'll pursue my mission of wedging poetry
into the hands of our young people.
~ Beth Ann Fennelly*
Beth Ann Fennelly is Mississippi's new Poet Laureate, only the fifth to occupy the position. She succeeds
Natasha Trethewey. Her four-year appointment was announced August 10 by the
Mississippi Arts Commission.
The honorary post used to be a life-time appointment; that changed on the death of
Winifred Farrar (1978-2010) whom Trethewey succeeded. (Information about the position is summarized on the Mississippi Arts Commission's
Poet Laureate page.)
On being appointed, Fennelly stated that she plans to "do a lot of readings and performances" and present workshops and classes to help make poetry accessible to all Mississippians, especially youth. She added that the job "gives me a platform that will help me spread the mission and the gospel of poetry, which is something I'm deeply invested in and have been for a long time."
* * * * *
You can't approach poetry with the heart or the ear;
you have to approach it purely with intellect and knowledge.
I think you start with the heart; I think you start with the ear.**
New Jersey-born and Chicago-raised, Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of three poetry collections:
Unmentionables (W.W. Norton, 2008),
Tender Hooks (W.W. Norton, 2004; reprint, 2005), and
Open House (W.W. Norton, reprint, 2009). The latter, her debut collection, received a
Kenyon Review Prize, Zoo Press Poetry Prize, and
Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award (2003). Fennelly's chapbook,
A Different Kind of Hunger, was published by the
Texas Review Press Poetry Chapbook Series and awarded the 1997
Texas Review Press Breakthrough Award.
Fennelly's Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs is slated to be published by W.W. Norton in fall 2017.
Among the subjects Fennelly addresses in her poetry are motherhood and parenting, love and marriage, death and loss, faith and religion, the natural world, and the Mississippi landscape. She uses a range of forms (blank verse, narrative, persona, sestina, and sonnet), writes in lyric sequences, often in a "direct address" style. Critics note her startling imagery, creativity, unexpected juxtapositions, humor and wordplay, clarity and accessibility, and what poet Albert Goldbarth described as "dead-on kick-ass language".
Following are excerpts from several of Fennelly's poems.
Distance was the house from which I welcomed you.
Time, time was the house, and to welcome you
I strung garlands of eggshells and rubies.
Thirty I welcomed you, you the salt
sucked from the tips of braids
after running from the ocean of sometime else's childhood.
I turned the skeleton key. [. . .]
~ from "The Welcoming" in Unmentionables
I've documented everything—each tooth,
your first haircut, your first bath in the sink.
Later when you claim neglect, I've proof
of my side for your husband or your shrink.
~ "Say Cheese" in Tender Hooks
[. . .] Don't
make me warn you of stars, how they see us
from that distance as miniature and breakable
from the bride who tops the wedding cake
to the Mary on Pinto dashboards
holding her ripe, red heart in her hands.
~ from "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding" in Open House
Poems by Fennelly have appeared in such periodicals as The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Blackbird, The Black Warrior Review, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and Verse Daily.
Fennelly's poems have been reprinted in a number of anthologies, including
The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (Bloomsbury USA, reprint, 2013),
The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present (Scribner, 2008),
Not for Mothers Only: Contemporary Poems on Child-Getting & Child Rearing (Fence Books, 2007),
The Best American Poetry 2006 (Scribner, 2006),
Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes (Michigan State University Press, 2006),
180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005), and
Poets on Place: Interviews & Tales from the Road (Utah State University Press, 2005). Her work also can be found in
The Best American Poetry 2005 (Scribner, 2005) and
The Best American Poetry 1996 (Scribner, 1996). She is included as well in
The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (Penguin Books, 2001),
Poets of the New Century (David R. Godine, 2001),
The New Great American Writers Cookbook (University Press of Mississippi, 2003) and
The Possibility of Language: Seven New Poets (iUniverse, 2001).
Magazines including Country Living, Garden & Gun, Los Angeles Review of Books, Southern Living, Woman's Day, and The Oxford American have published Fennelly's articles on books, culture, design, and travel. The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Ecotone magazine, among others, have published Fennelly's essays and criticism.
An accomplished and highly commended poet and writer, Fennelly is the recipient of
The Chattahoochee Review's
Lamar York Prize in Creative Nonfiction (2016), the
Orlando Award in Creative Nonfiction (A Room of Her Own Foundation, 2015), for her essay "Goner"; and a
Subiaco Award for Literary Merit (2012). A
United States Artists Fellow (2006), Fennelly also received a
Pushcart Prize (2001) and a
National Endowment for the Arts poetry grant (2003). She also has been awarded a poetry grant (2010) and two nonfiction grants from the state arts commission (2015 and 2005), and a poetry grant from the Illinois Arts Council (2001). Her other honors include a
Fulbright grant to study poetry in Brazil (2009), residencies at the
MacDowell Colony and University of Arizona, and a
Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin (1998-1999). She was among the "Top 20 Arts and Humanities Professors in Mississippi" in 2013. In addition, in 2011, she was named "Humanities Teacher of the Year" by the Mississippi Humanities Council.
Fennelly directs the master of fine arts program of the English department at the University of Mississippi, a job she is relinquishing to handle responsibilities as Poet Laureate.
Resources
Photo Courtesy University of Mississippi (English Department) and Poetry Foundation
All Poetry Excerpts © Beth Ann Fennelly
* Quoted from Fennelly's Statement on Appointment (Presented Live on State Arts Commission FaceBook Page)
Beth Ann Fennelly Poems Online: "
Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding" at Writers' Corner, National Endowment for the Arts; "
The Kudzu Chronicles" (Excerpt) at
The Clarion-Ledger; "
Souvenir" at Academy of American Poets; "
Asked For a Happy Memory of Her Father, She Recalls Wrigley Field", "
The Kudzu Chronicles - Oxford, Mississippi" (Excerpt), "
Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding", "
Because People Ask What My Daughter Will Think of My Poems When She's 16", "
Souvenir", "
Say You Waved: A Dream Song Cycle", and "
Favors", All at PoemHunter; "
Because People Ask..." at Poems Out Loud (Audio Available); "
The Kudzu Chronicles - Oxford, Mississippi" at
Blackbird; "
Three Months After Giving Birth, The Body Loses Certain Hormones" at All We Can Hold (Poems of Motherhood); "A Study of Writing Habits", "Because People Ask...", "Cow Tipping", "I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese", "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Reading", "The Impossibility of Language", and "The Welcoming" (Audio), All at
Knox Writers House; "I Would Like to Go Back as I Am, Now, to You as You Were, Then" and "The Cup Which My Father Hath Given Me", Both at
Louisiana Literature; "
Heating and Cooling" (Audio) at SoundCloud; "
Some Childhood Dreams Really Do Come True" at Brevity; "
The Welcoming" at
Verse Daily; "
Favors", "
We Are the Renters", and "
Say You Waved: A Dream Song Cycle", All at
Blackbird; "
I Provide for You, Boy Child, Like God" at
The American Poetry Review; "
Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding" at
Best American Poetry Blog
Beth Ann Fennelly Reading Her Book-length Poem "
The Kudzu Chronicles" (Crown Ring Press) on YouTube (Video):
Beth Ann Fennelly, "A Reckoning of Kisses", Guernica, May 26, 2016
Beth Ann Fennelly, "On Collaboration", Glimmer Train Press
Beth Ann Fennelly's Tender Hooks on GoogleBooks
Beth Ann Fennelly on
FaceBook and Tumblr
Luan Gaines, "An Interview with Beth Ann Fennelly", curledup, 2005
Charlotte J. Robertson, "The Moments in Our Lives: An Interview with Beth Ann Fennelly", Southern Scribe
Mike Smith, "Mentioning 'Unmentionables'", Review, Notre Dame Review (pdf)
Isaac Cates, "'Unmentionables'", Review, Smartish Pace
Ginny Kaczmarek, "Unflinching Honesty: Beth Ann Fennelly's 'Tender Hooks'", Review, Literary Mama, October 2007
Adrianne Kalfopoulou, "Beth Ann Fennelly: 'Open House'", Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, 2002
Fence Books
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Page for
The Titled World
In Fact Books
MacAdam/Cage
Michigan State University Press
W.W. Norton (See
Beth Ann Fennelly page.)
W.W. Norton Pages for
Great with Child,
Open House,
Tender Hooks, and
Unmentionables
Scribner
Texas Review Press
Utah State University Press
University Press of Mississippi
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