POET

Michael Collier (1953 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Collier’s poems often reveal a fascination with objects and their significance; they are populated with, according to poet and critic James Longenbach, a “sinister and yet oddly comic cast of misfits, ogres and giants.” One of his poems from The Neighbor (1995) juxtaposes a map of Vietnam, bread balls, and fish hooks for catching bluegills; in “All Souls,” macabre, costumed revelers watching a raccoon are dressed as historical and political figures. Collier himself has noted, “I suppose . . . that I believe almost literally in Williams’ notion of ‘no ideas but in things.’ I’m a consumer. I like things.” Beyond the surfaces of the things and characters, Collier’s poems reach for moments of truth and clarity.

As an editor and director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference since 1995, Collier has been an influential member of the writing and teaching community, saying in a blackbird interview about teaching poetry, “I think poetry does have this ability to help us deal with things that aren’t black and white and make our thinking more subtle.” He is the editor of two acclaimed anthologies of poetry, The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry (1993) and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (2000).

Michael Collier grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, studied with William Meredith as an undergraduate at Connecticut College, teaches at the University of Maryland, and has served as Maryland’s poet laureate. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Thomas Watson Fellowship.