Saskia Hamilton

Saskia Hamilton is the author of three books of poems: As for Dream (Graywolf Press, 2001), Divide These: Poems (Graywolf, 2005), and the retrospective Canal: New and Selected Poems 1993-2005 (Todmorden, Lancs., UK: Arc Publications, 2005). Her verse has also appeared in many of the most highly respected poetry journals, among them Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, Triquarterly, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Book Review. Her Guggenheim Fellowship is supporting work on her next book of poems, Night-jar.

She has also edited two very well received volumes, The Letters of Robert Lowell (FSG, 2005; London: Faber and Faber, 2005) and, with Thomas Travisano, Words in Air: The Correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (FSG, 2009; Faber and Faber, 2009). She had first begun work on Lowell in 1999 as a Bunting Fellow, researching his letters at Harvard’s libraries. Ms. Hamilton has also been a Dean’s Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2000) and an NEA Poetry Fellow (2007).

Ms. Hamilton received a B.A. from Kenyon College in 1989, and, with the support of a Beinecke Memorial Scholarship for Graduate Study (1988-91), an M.A. in English and creative writing from New York University in 1991. After finishing her studies, Ms. Hamilton held a number of literature-related positions, spending five years as coordinator for poetry and lectures at the Folger Shakespeare Library (1992-97), two years at the Lannan Foundation, as Associate Director and then Director of its literary programs (1997-98), and a year each teaching at Kenyon College (2000-01) and at Stonehill College (2001-02). All of these experiences enrich her work at Barnard College, where as an associate professor in the English department she not only is a highly regarded teacher, but helps in hosting readings and lectures, and directs Women Poets at Barnard.