About

Poet, Author, Professor Emerita

Connecticut State Poet Laureate

(April 2019 – April 2022)

“Margaret Gibson has created a voice and an art that connect the sensuous experience of the physical world with the inner life,” Pattiann Rogers has written.  Nationally and internationally acclaimed, Margaret Gibson poetry is characterized by an uncommon diversity.  The voice may be predominantly lyrical and meditative, and yet there are award-winning, book-length narratives in which she fully inhabits the consciousness of her personae.  Hers is “a finely crafted lyricism and attention to detail rare among poets today,” wrote Brian Henry.  Gibson herself has said, “Writing poetry is an act of attention and receptivity.  You study whatever it is that strikes your attention—whether a scarlet tanager, river, field, or forest, whether mother, daughter, alcoholic, photographer, lover. You take what’s given into that part of the self that inquires, test, embraces, and embodies.  Outer and inner coalesce and fuse.”

“Everything is ultimately connected; everything, therefore, is both personal and impersonal. We’re part of an enormous, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful experience of unfolding Consciousness.”

“We’re here to find the things that are broken and to mend them, to find where there is fracture or division and to create a wholeness.”

Career

Teaching

  • Madison College
  • George Mason University
  • Connecticut College
  • Virginia Commonwealth University (MFA Program)
  • Eastern Connecticut State University
  • The University of Massachusetts (MFA Program)
  • The University of Connecticut
  • Professor in Residence 1993-2006; Professor Emerita, University of Connecticut

Education

  • M.A. 1967 The University of Virginia
B.A. 1966 Hollins College
  • B.A. 1966 Hollins College (Phi Beta Kappa)

Editor

  • Poetry Editor, New Virginia Review, 1992-1998

Writer in Residence

  • Phillips Academy/Andover
  • Mini residencies at George Mason University
  • Mohegan Community College
  • American University
  • Juniata College
  • The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford
  • Trinity College
  • Marietta College
  • Illinois College
  • Elon College
  • Centenary College
  • Reed College
  • Central College (Iowa)
  • College of Wooster
  • Old Dominion University

Other

  • Georgia Poetry Circuit
  • Connecticut Poetry Circuit
  • Sunken Garden Poetry
  • Mystic Arts Café
  • The Woman’s Club of Richmond, VA.  For recent performances and readings see website.

Books of Poems

All from Louisiana State University Press

  • The glass globe, 2021
  • Not hearing the wood thrush, 2018
  • Broken cup, 2014
  • Second nature, 2010
  • One body, 2007
  • Autumn grasses, 2003
  • Icon and evidence, 2001
  • Earth elegy: new and selected poems, 1997
  • The vigil, 1993
  • Out in the open, 1989
  • Memories of the future, 1986
  • Long walks in the afternoon, 1982
  • Signs, 1979

Poetry in anthologies

  • Best American Poetry, 2009 and 2017
  • Fifty Years of American Poets
  • The Morrow Anthology of Younger Poets
  • Contemporary New England Poetry
  • The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry
  • Vital Signs:  Contemporary American Poetry from University Presses
  • Beneath a Single Moon:  Buddhism in Contemporary Poetry
  • The Forgotten Language:  Contemporary Poets and Nature
  • Merrimack
  • Cries of the Spirit
  • After Frost
  • Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age
  • Immortelles
  • Open Door

Book of Prose

  • The Prodigal Daughter, Reclaiming an Unfinished Childhood, University of Missouri Press, 2008

Magazine Publications

  • Georgia Review
  • Gettysburg Review
  • Hudson Review
  • Iowa Review
  • Image
  • Michigan Quarterly Review
  • Missouri Review
  • Minnesota Review
  • New England Review
  • Shenandoah
  • The Southern Review
  • Creative Non-fiction

Awards

  • Lamont Selection, given by Academy of American Poets, 1982, Long Walks in the Afternoon.
  • Co-winner of the Melville Kane Award, 1986-87, given by the Poetry Society of America for Memories of the Future.
  • Finalist, National Book Award, for The Vigil. 1993.
  • Connecticut Center for the Book Award, 2008, for One Body.
  • Finalist, Poet’s Prize, 2016, for Broken Cup.
  • James Boatright Prize, “Earth Elegy,” 1996.
  • Pushcart Prizes: “Archaeology,” 2001; “House of Stone and Song,” 2002; “Broken Cup,” 2015.
  • The Best American Poetry, 2009, “Black Snake.”
  • The Best American Poetry, 2017, “Passage.”
  • Finalist, Virginia Center for the Book Award, 2002;
  • Finalist, Connecticut Center for the Book Award, 2002, 2004.

Grants

  • Academy of American Poets Grant to Poet Laureates, 2020.
  • National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 1985
  • Individual Artist Grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, 1976, 1988.
  • Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Teaching Fellowship, 1994.
  • Yaddo, 1975, 1982.