Tony Trigilio



Tony Trigilio is the author and editor of sixteen books, including, most recently, Craft: A Memoir (Marsh Hawk Press, 2023); The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation, co-edited with Erik Mortenson (Clemson University Press/Liverpool University Press, 2023); Proof Something Happened, selected by Susan Howe as the winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize (Marsh Hawk Press, 2021), and Ghosts of the Upper Floor (BlazeVOX [books], 2019), the third installment in his multivolume poem, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood). A volume of his selected poems, Fuera del Taller del Cosmos, was published in Guatemala in 2018 by Editorial Poe (translated by Bony Hernandez). He is the editor of the chapbook Dispatches from the Body Politic: Interviews with Jan Beatty, Meg Day, and Douglas Kearney (Essay Press, 2016), a collection of interviews from his poetry podcast Radio Free Albion. His other books include, most recently, Inside the Walls of My Own House (BlazeVOX, 2016), The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 1 (BlazeVOX, 2014), White Noise (Apostrophe Books, 2013), and, as editor, Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta Press, 2014).

He also is the author of the poetry collections Historic Diary (BlazeVOX, 2011) and The Lama's English Lessons (Three Candles Press, 2006); the chapbooks With the Memory, Which is Enormous (Main Street Rag Press, 2009) and Make a Joke and I Will Sigh and You Will Laugh and I Will Cry (Scantily Clad Press, 2008); and two books of criticism, Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) and "Strange Prophecies Anew" (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). With Tim Prchal, he co-edited the anthology, Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930 (Rutgers University Press, 2008).

His poems have been anthologized widely, in The Best American Poetry (Scribner 2023), Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry (Third World Press, 2022), The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017), Poems Dead and Undead (Knopf/Everyman's Library, 2014), and Obsessions: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century (Dartmouth College Press, 2014), among others.

He has published critical essays in Reconstructing the Beats (ed. Jennie Skerl; Palgrave/ MacMillan, 2004) and Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation (ed. Ronna Johnson and Nancy Grace; Rutgers University Press, 2002).  Tony's articles and book reviews also have appeared in journals such as American Literature, Another Chicago Magazine, Boston Review, The Journal of Beat Studies, Milk magazine, Modern Language Studies, and Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 

Tony played in the band Pet Theories from 2012-2016, and he recorded and toured in the early-1990s as a member of Drumming on Glass. From 2012-2017, he hosted the monthly poetry podcast Radio Free Albion.

He holds a Ph.D. in English from Northeastern University in Boston. While living in Boston, Tony edited Lotus Arrow, the newsletter of the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, and was one of the founding members of the Fenway Skills Exchange, a grass-roots alternative economic system for the Fenway neighborhood.

He co-edits Court Green, and is an Associate Editor for Tupelo Quarterly. A recipient of a 2009 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, he has taught since 1999 at Columbia College Chicago, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry. His courses can be found at starve.org/teaching/classes.html.

Updated April 24, 2024

 

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