Bobbie Louise Hawkins

Hawkins was born in Abilene in west Texas, to a teenage mother.

{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/obituaries/bobbie-louise-hawkins-beat-poet-and-author-dies-at-87.html|title=Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Beat Poet and Author, Dies at 87|work=The New York Times|author=Sam Roberts|date=May 18, 2018|accessdate=7 November 2018}} She was raised by her mother Nora Hall and her stepfather Harold Hall, with guidance from her grandmother, who told her tales of her family. She spent much of her childhood reading, believing "that the world I read in books existed out there." The family later moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she met and married her first husband, Olaf Hoek, a Danish architect. The couple soon moved to England, where she studied art at the Slade School of Fine Arts of the University College London for one year. They later moved to British Honduras, now Belize, where she taught in missionary schools. She also attended Sophia University. The two later divorced after having two daughters. She returned to New Mexico, where she met Robert Creeley, a teacher who later become a famous poet. The two soon married. Creeley believed that any wife of a poet would want to write herself, but derided Hawkins's attempts, to the point that she was "too married, too old, and too late" for her do so. "I was fighting for the right to write badly until I got better." Her first book Own Your Body came out in 1973. Hawkins and Creeley separated in 1975, after Hawkins had two more daughters. Hawkins was an accomplished artist. Her first one-woman show, of paintings and collages, was at the Gotham Book Mart in 1974. Many of her artworks graced her books' covers. In 1978, Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg hired her to teach fiction writing workshops and courses unliterary studies at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, now called Naropa University. She remained at the school until her retirement in 2010. After retiring, she continued to offer readings and teach at Naropa's Summer Writing Program.{{cite web|url=http://www.naropa.edu/distancelearning/faculty/hawkins.cfm|title=Faculty|website=www.naropa.edu|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070818073103/http://www.naropa.edu/distancelearning/faculty/hawkins.cfm|archivedate=August 18, 2007}}

She wrote a one-hour play for PBS, "Talk", in 1980. She released two CD’s, Live at the Great American Music Hall and Jaded Love. In 2001, Life As We Know It, a one-woman show, was performed in Boulder and New York City. She published 19 books and pieces in over 50 anthologies and journals. As part of the Beat Movement, many of her poems feature unconventional construction. Many of her poems are short, such as "trouble and hope," which has three lines. Her ethic might be best explained in another work of hers, "in time I'll do what":{{cite web|url=http://www.bobbielouisehawkins.com/|title=Bobbie Louise Hawkins|publisher=}}

{{blockquote|

:in time I'll do what

:I would do now if

:there weren't perfection

:to consider}}

She was survived by her two daughters from her second marriage, one daughter from her first marriage, and two grandchildren.

• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship 1979
• Briarcombe Foundation Residency 1983

• {{cite book|title=One Small Saga Republished|publisher=Ugly Duckling Press|year=2020|isbn=978-1-946433-64-0}}
• [http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/on-bobbie-louise-hawkins.html "On Bobbie Louise Hawkins"], Review of Selected Prose and Fifteen Poems by Patrick James Dunagan, October 2012
• {{cite book|title=Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins|publisher=BlazeVOX|year=2012|editor=Barbara Henning|isbn= 978-1609641009}}
• {{cite book|title=Fifteen Poems Republished|publisher=Belladonna|year=2012|isbn=978-0982338766}}
• [http://www.ratical.org/ratical/ratlife13.html "life in Bolinas: Bobbie Louise Hawkins, laborin'", article]
• [http://www.bigbridge.org/issue11/fictbhawkins.htm "Panna: 1. Cyril in Texas", ''Big Bridge #11]
• [http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=189 "In the Colony", Ploughshares, Spring 1974]
• [http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=188 "I Owe You One", Ploughshares, Spring 1974] (also recorded on "Live at the Great American Music Hall, 1981 w/Terry Garthwaite and Rosalie Sorrels)
• [http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=187 "Bathroom/Animal/Castration Story", Ploughshares, Spring 1974]
• {{cite book|title=Absolutely Eden|publisher=United Artists Books|year=2008|isbn=978-0-935992-35-9}}
• {{cite book|title=Bijou|publisher=Farfalla/McMillan & Parrish|year= 2005|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_HJBPPd3wdoC|isbn=978-0-9766341-8-8}}
• {{cite book| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oMoDZ3eDVswC&q=Bobbie+Louise+Hawkins&pg=PA122|chapter=Panel on Personal Geography|title=Civil disobediences: poetics and politics in action| editor=Anne Waldman|editor2=Lisa Birman|editor2-link=How to Walk Away (novel)| publisher=Coffee House Press|year=2004|isbn=978-1-56689-158-5}}
• {{cite book| title=My Own Alphabet|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z0931soHzC0C&q=Bobbie+Louise+Hawkins|publisher=Coffee House Press|year=1989|isbn=978-0-918273-52-9}}
• {{cite book|title=One Small Saga| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HckJ6xk6Kl4C|publisher=Coffee House Press| year=1984|isbn=978-0-918273-05-5}}
• {{cite book|title=Almost Everything|publisher=Coach House Press|year=1982|isbn=978-0-88910-238-5|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/almosteverything00hawk}}
• {{cite book|title=Frenchy and Cuban Pete|publisher=Tombouctou|year=1977|isbn=978-0-939180-05-9}}
• Back to Texas (Bearhug) 1977
• {{cite book|title=15 Minutes|url=http://belladonnaseries.org/fifteenpoems.html|publisher=Arif Press|year=1974|isbn=978-0-913537-04-6}}; republished by Belladonna (New York, 2010); {{ISBN|978-0-9823387-6-6}}.
• Own Your Body, Black Sparrow Press, 1973

• {{cite book| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Dx3IC_4gxUC&q=Bobbie+Louise+Hawkins&pg=PA127| chapter=Depths and Heights and Sweet Red Melons; What is That Gesture...; It's Like...; Endlessly...| title=New directions in prose and poetry, Issue 35| editor=James Laughlin| publisher=New Directions Publishing| year= 1977| isbn= 978-0-8112-0672-3 }}
• {{cite book| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YK3VxTFLzRYC&q=Bobbie+Louise+Hawkins&pg=PA19| chapter=My Daddy was a Good-Looking Woman Chaser| title=Calling home: working-class women's writings : an anthology| editor=Janet Zandy| publisher=Rutgers University Press| year= 1990| isbn=978-0-8135-1528-1 }}

• [http://jacketmagazine.com/36/oppen-hawkins.shtml "George Oppen, Mary Oppen and a Poem", Jacket 36, 2008]

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/26/arts/music-garthwaite-hawkins-and-sorrels-weavbe-folklore.html "Music: Garthwaite, Hawkins and Sorrels weave folklore" New York Times, by Stephen Holden, September 26, 1983]
• [http://www.naropa.edu/notenoughnight/spring05/BobbieLH_sp05.html "Monologue, "Take Love, For Instance" ", Naropa's Summer Writing Program, 2004]
• [http://www.prx.org/pieces/3807 "1990 Bobbie Louise Hawkins - First Story", PRX]
• {{Official|www.bobbielouisehawkins.com}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hawkins, Bobbie Louise}}

Category:1930 births

Category:2018 deaths

Category:American women short story writers

Category:American short story writers

Category:Sophia University alumni

Category:American women poets

Category:21st-century American women

Category:People from Abilene, Texas