Paisley Rekdal
{{short description|American poet}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Paisley Rekdal
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| image = REKDAL SUU 2025 HEADSHOT.jpg
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| occupation = Professor, University of Utah
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| nationality = American
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| alma_mater = University of Washington (BA)
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (MA)
University of Michigan (MFA)
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| genre = Poetry
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| website = [http://www.paisleyrekdal.com/ Official website]
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Paisley Rekdal is an American poet and former Poet Laureate of Utah. She is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In, the memoir Intimate, and six books of poetry. For her work, she has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2024 The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes in both 2009 and 2013, Narrative's Poetry Prize, the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize, and several other awards from the state arts council. She has been recognized for her poems and essays in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetry series, and on National Public Radio, among others. She was a recipient of a 2019 Academy of American Poets' Poets Laureate Fellowship.{{Cite web|url=http://www.paisleyrekdal.com/|title=paisley rekdal home|website=paisleyrekdal|language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-04}}
Early life and education
She grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese-American mother and a Norwegian father. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington, as well as a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto for Medieval Studies and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan.{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/paisley-rekdal|title=Paisley Rekdal|date=2020-04-03|website=Poetry Foundation|language=en|access-date=2020-04-04}}
Career
Rekdal is a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and at Goddard College's low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in Port Townsend, Washington.{{cite web|url=https://faculty.utah.edu/u0398961-PAISLEY_REKDAL/biography/index.hml|title=PAISLEY REKDAL|work=utah.edu|accessdate=30 June 2015}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.writersatwork.org/2007faculty.html|title=2007 Faculty|website=www.writersatwork.org}} She is also credited with having created the community web project Mapping Salt Lake City.{{Cite web|url=https://www.mappingslc.org/|title=Mapping Salt Lake City {{!}} Stories, Memories & History - Home|website=www.mappingslc.org|language=en-gb|access-date=2020-04-04}}
Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative Magazine,{{cite web |title=Paisley Rekdal |url=https://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/paisley-rekdal |website=Narrative Magazine |accessdate=22 February 2019}} Nerve, New England Review,{{cite web |url=http://www.nereview.com/files/2014/01/NER-Rekdal.pdf |title=When It Is Over It Will Be Over |date=2014 |website=www.nereview.com|access-date=2019-08-08}} The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, NPR,{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2012/07/10/156543220/newspoet-paisley-rekdal-writes-the-day-in-verse|title=NewsPoet: Paisley Rekdal Writes The Day In Verse|date=10 July 2012|work=NPR.org|accessdate=30 June 2015}} Ploughshares,{{cite web|url=http://www.pshares.org/read/author-detail.cfm?intAuthorID=6763|title=Read By Author|work=pshares.org|accessdate=30 June 2015}}{{cite web|url=http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19501|title=Bats|work=poets.org|accessdate=30 June 2015}} Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West,{{cite web|url=http://webdelsol.com/Quarterly_West/archives/iss56/rekcanz.html|title=Paisley Rekdal, "Canzone"|work=webdelsol.com|accessdate=30 June 2015}} The Virginia Quarterly Review,{{cite web|url=http://www.vqronline.org/people/paisley-rekdal|title=Paisley Rekdal|work=vqronline.org|accessdate=30 June 2015}} and Blackbird.{{cite web|url=http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/rekdal_p/index.htm|title=Paisley Rekdal, Blackbird|work=vcu.edu|accessdate=30 June 2015}}
She was appointed Poet Laureate of Utah in May 2017.{{cite web|url=http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865679737/U-English-professor-named-Utah-poet-laureate.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170511234758/http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865679737/U-English-professor-named-Utah-poet-laureate.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=May 11, 2017|title=U. professor named Utah poet laureate|accessdate=11 May 2017}}
In 2018, Rekdal was awarded the Narrative Prize for a trilogy of poems, “Quiver,” “Telling the Wasps,” and “The Olive Tree at Vouves,” which combine "Keatsian lyricism with a mortal questioning of the nature of memory in the modern age."{{cite web |title=Paisley Rekdal Wins 2018 Narrative Prize |url=https://www.narrativemagazine.com/paisley-rekdal-wins-2018-narrative-prize |website=Narrative Magazine |accessdate=22 February 2019}}
Works
= Poetry =
- {{cite book|title=A Crash of Rhinos|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=foDQNqHry5MC|year=2000|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-2273-5}}
- Six Girls Without Pants, Eastern Washington University Press, 2002, {{ISBN|9780910055826}}
- {{cite book|title=The Invention of the Kaleidoscope|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XYp8AQAAQBAJ|date=25 February 2007|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press|isbn=978-0-8229-9083-3}}
- {{cite book|title=Animal Eye|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PYd8AQAAQBAJ|date=26 February 2012|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press|isbn=978-0-8229-7838-1}}{{cite news|last=Phillips|first=Emilia|title=Becoming Feral: a Review of Paisley Rekdal's Animal Eye|accessdate=19 February 2014|newspaper=Kenyon Review|date=Summer 2013|quote=Animal Eye reminds us that we don’t know the limits of empathy, that we can’t presume we’re the only beings who recognize the familiar in another’s gaze. What we recognize as familiar continually changes as we change, and we change by looking. And what is looking but the taking in of reflected light?|url=https://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2013-summer/selections/animal-eye-by-paisley-rekdal-738439/ }}{{cite news|last=Farmer|first=Jonathan|title=Beauty and Violence|accessdate=19 February 2014|newspaper=Slate|date=April 1, 2012|quote=In acknowledging the disappointing facts of our existence and singing her way into its amazement, she has created poetry that lives alongside the misery we sometimes witness—and sometimes cause.|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/03/paisley_rekdal_s_poetry_of_beauty_and_violence_.html}}
- Imaginary Vessels. Copper Canyon Press, 2017 {{ISBN|1556594976}}
- Nightingale. Copper Canyon Press. 7 May 2019. {{ISBN|978-1-5565-9567-7}}
- West: A Translation. Copper Canyon Press. 2 May 2023. {{ISBN|9781556596568}}
= Prose =
- {{cite book|title=The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aq8vU1LAPU4C&pg=PP5|date=18 December 2007|publisher=Vintage Books|isbn=978-0-307-42908-7}}
- Intimate: An American Family Photo Album, Tupelo Press, 2012, {{ISBN|9781936797080}}
- The Broken Country, University of Georgia Press, 2017, {{ISBN|9780820351179}}
- Appropriate: A Provocation, W.W. Norton, 2021, {{ISBN|978-1-324-00358-8}}
- Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: How to Read and Write Poetry Forensically, W.W. Norton, 2024, {{ISBN|978-0-393-88198-1}}
References
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External links
- [http://www.paisleyrekdal.com/ Official website]
- [https://twitter.com/PaisleyRekdal Official Twitter Account]
- [https://faculty.utah.edu/u0398961-PAISLEY_REKDAL/biography/index.hml University of Utah faculty profile of Paisley Rekdal]
- [http://www.loc.gov/poetry/interviews/rekdal.html "Of Perspective and Perception": An Interview with Paisley Rekdal (Interview Series, The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress)]
- [http://www.coalhillreview.com/?p=19751 Animal Eye by Paisley Rekdal – Coal Hill Review]
{{UT Poets Laureate|state=autocollapse}}
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Category:University of Washington alumni
Category:University of Toronto alumni
Category:University of Michigan alumni
Category:University of Utah faculty
Category:Poets from Washington (state)
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:Goddard College faculty