My tenth book, Because What Else Could I Do, has just won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. The judge was Alice Fulton. Here is her citation: Alice Fulton’s Citation: Throughout her distinguished career, Martha Collins has devised a poetics of justice and revelation. Her singular aesthetic reaches its apogee in this sequence […]
News
Lannan Foundation Residency
I will be in Marfa, Texas on a Lannan Foundation residency from January 11-February 17, 2020. Looking forward!
First Review of Because What Else Could I Do in Booklist
In this deeply personal book (initially not intended for publication), poet Collins (Admit One, 2016) steps away from her usual explorations of the larger social circumstances in which we live—and the pain they cause—to explore the pain of her husband’s death. This collection reads like a short story with an emergent plot that includes a […]
Because What Else Could I Do: just published!
Because What Else Could I Do is a sequence of fifty-five untitled short poems, almost all of them addressed to my husband following his unexpected death in 2016. I wrote them for him, for his abiding presence—and I wrote them for myself. At the time, I had no intention of publishing them. But the book will […]
Summer Workshop
Chautauqua NY I will be teaching a week-long workshop this summer from June 23-29 in Chautauqua, New York. See the Events page of this website for information.
Jane Cooper Essays: Just published, April 15!
A Radiance of Attention: Jane Cooper
Fellow: Women’s International Study Center
In November-December 2018, I had a month-long residency at the Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe, NM, to work on a new book of poetry.