Mark Strand

Mark Strand (born April 11, 1934) is an American poet, born in Canada.

[edit] Biography

Mark Strand is a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada on April 11, 1934. His early years were spent in North America, while much of his teenage years were spent in South and Central America. He earned his B.A. from Antioch College in 1957. He then studied painting under Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned a B.F.A in 1959. On a Fulbright Scholarship, Strand studied nineteenth-century Italian poetry in Italy during 1960-1961. He attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop the following year and earned an Master of Fine Arts in 1962. In 1965 he spent a year in Brazil as a Fulbright Lecturer. Strand has since taught at many universities and published eleven books of poetry, in addition to translations from the poetry of Rafael Alberti and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, among others. He left his position as Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 2005, and currently teaches at Columbia University.

In 1981, Strand was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress during the 1990-1991 term. Strand has received numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for A Blizzard of One.

Strand's nonfiction essay Poetry in the World appears in Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts.

Poetry

Prose

Translations

Poems from the Quechua (Halty Ferguson, 1971)
Alberti, Rafael, The Owl's Insomnia (Atheneum, 1973)
Drummond de Andrade, Carlos, Souvenir of the Ancient World (Antaeus Editions, 1976)
Looking for Poetry: Poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Rafael Alberti, with Songs from the Quechua (2002)