Photo credit: Todd Donery
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Anna George Meek is the author of two full-length books of poems, Acts of Contortion, which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, and The Genome Rhapsodies, which won the Richard Snyder Prize; her chapbook Engraved won the Snowbound Chapbook Competition. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and two Minnesota State Arts Board grants. She has published in journals such as Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and The Yale Review. Her work has appeared on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac and has been selected multiple times for both Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. She gives readings nationally and has written numerous commissions for events and choral composers. Several of her previously published poems have been set to music, and one has been the basis for a ballet. Meek lives with her husband and daughter in the Twin Cities where she sings professionally with the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers and is a professor of English.
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The Genome Rhapsodies
"Like strands of DNA, the syntax in these brilliant and moving poems intertwines with the infinitely recombinant moments and utterances that comprise our lives...These poems re-member us in language and reveal how the past becomes us, in every sense of the word; they are gorgeous, unforgettable works of art."
-Angie Estes, 2014 Snyder Prize Judge and 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner |
Engraved
The poems teem with whaling schooners, passenger pigeons, a bayonet, cupola furnace, clavichord -- words and objects at the brink of extinction, placed in and around the death of the poet's father. Located at the intersection of art and grief, these poems honor anyone who has set down lines and vanished from the earth.
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Acts of Contortion
"Acts of Contortion is a first book of great urgency, a scorching protest against human suffering. I am deepened immeasurably by this work that struggles to make connections and transfigure losses, these beautifully made poems--contorted acts!--that hum with the music of compassion."
—Edward Hirsch |