Michael Waters

Michael Waters’ books include The Dean of Discipline (forthcoming, U Pittsburgh P, 2018), and Celestial Joyride (2016), Gospel Night (2011), Darling Vulgarity (2006—finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001—finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize) from BOA Editions. He has co-edited Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois UP, 2003).

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Waters earned the M.A. degree from SUNY-Brockport, the M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa, and the Ph.D. degree in American Literature from Ohio University.

His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, and Rolling Stone. In 2004, he chaired the poetry panel for the National Book Awards. Recipient of five Pushcart Prizes, residency fellowships from writers’ colonies both here and abroad, including Yaddo, MacDowell, St. James Cavalier Centre (Malta) and Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, and NJ State Council on the Arts, Waters is Professor of English at Monmouth University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry & Poetry in Translation.

In a review of his recent book, Celestial Joyride (2016), the San Antonio Express-News noted: “Waters stands among the best American poets writing today.”

Photograph credit: Michael Paul Thomas