Mohr Visiting Poets

Each year, the Creative Writing Program welcomes a distinguished poet to teach a Stanford writing seminar to undergraduates. These unique classes are kept small--limited to no more than 15 students--and they focus on a subject of the poet's expertise and choosing. These seminars are made possible with the generous support of Lawrence and Nancy Mohr.

The poet also holds a public reading and colloquium. For information about events with previous Mohr Visiting Poets, refer to our Past Events page.

 

Arthur Sze

 

Mariana Cook

 

Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, including The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021); Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award; Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; Quipu (2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 (1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and Archipelago (1995), selected for an American Book Award. He has also published one book of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon (2001), selected for the Western States Book Award. A second, expanded edition, The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in May 2024, and he has also edited Chinese Writers on Writing (Trinity University Press, 2010). 

A recipient of a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the 2021 Shelley Memorial Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, as well as five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, Sze was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Poetry, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Harper’s Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. A Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is also a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

 

English 192V The Occasions of Poetry

 

  • Offered: Spring 2024

  • Instructor: Professor Sze

  • Satisfies the Intermediate/Advanced Poetry requirement

  • Enrollment granted on application basis. To be considered for enrollment, please submit the Spring 2024 Course Application

We will explore a wide range of possibilities as we practice and develop the craft of writing poems. We will experiment through suggested (not required) weekly writing prompts that draw on ekphrastics, astronomy, translation (knowledge of a foreign language is not required), Asian poetic forms, diction and voice, simultaneity, prose poems, letter poems, and eventually will consider the rich, varied possibilities of the contemporary poetic sequence. We will use one book-length poem as a common text, and additional reading and research will include many other sources. The workshop format will involve a close reading of each student’s poems and will also use discussion as a vehicle to consider larger, deeper poetic issues at stake. I hope it will be an exciting journey as we take risks with language and encourage, support, and inspire each other to develop as poets.

 

Mohr Visiting poetsVisiting Period
Michael Collier2022-2023
A. Van Jordan2021-2022
Ada Limón2020-2021
Carl Phillips2020-2021
Louise Glück2019-2020
Louise Glück2018-2019
Louise Glück2017-2018
Robert Pinsky2016-2017
Jane Hirshfield2015-2016
Louise Glück2014-2015
Louise Glück2013-2014
Ann Carson2012-2013
Louise Glück2011-2012
Stephen Dobyns2010-2011
Kay Ryan2009-2010
Max Doty2008-2009
Robert Bly2007-2008
Robert Pinsky2006-2007
Li-Young Lee2005-2006
Heather McHugh2004-2005
Thom Gunn2003-2004
Yusef Komunyakaa2002-2003
Robert Hass2001-2002