Alan Michael Parker is the author of five collections of poems, Days Like Prose, The Vandals, Love Song with Motor Vehicles, A Peal of Sonnets, and most recently, Elephants & Butterflies (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008), as well as a novel, Cry Uncle. He is also Editor of The Imaginary Poets, and co-editor of two other volumes. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among other magazines; his prose appears regularly in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, he holds degrees from Washington University and Columbia University. Since 1998, Alan Michael Parker has taught at Davidson College, where he is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing; he is also a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program.
Alan Michael Parker lives in Davidson, NC, with his partner, the artist Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.
News:
"Fifteen Ways to Think About Italian Opera," a list poem by AMP, has been awarded First Prize in the Mid-American Review's Fineline Competition for "Prose Poems, Short Shorts, and Everything in Between," judged by David Shumate. The award comes with publication in March, 2010, and a $1000 prize.
Three excerpts from AMP's new novel, The Committee on Town Happiness, have been published in the January issue of the new on-line magazine, The Collagist, with a podcast and an interview to follow. Here's the link.
"The Rhinoceros in the Hall," an essay by AMP on the Pompidou Centre, live art, and democracy, has just been published in The Believer. Here's a link to the teaser.
Two new poems by AMP are on-line, at Connotation Press. Here's the link.
AMP's poem, "To the Peasant, Avram," was featured on Poetry Daily on September 5, 2009. Here's the link.
AMP's poem, "A Christmas Letter," was featured on Poetry Daily on May 27, 2009. Here's the link.
AMP's poem, "Peaches or Plums," was featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on January 16, 2009. Listen here.
AMP's poem, "My Son, Under the Waterfall," was featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on January 11, 2009. Listen here.
Writing in the Mid-American Review, John Freeman says of Elephants & Butterflies: "I would guess that Parker's brand of ironic inquiry will keep the critics busy for quite a while. Not since Wallace Stevens has America produced a poet as complex and varied as he is accessible. This collection is a must for any serious reader of American poetry."
Look for new poems and works of flash fiction by AMP in American Literary Review, Black Clock, The Collagist, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Connotation Press, The Kenyon Review, The Laurel Review, Opium, Southeast Review, Sub-Tropics and Tikkun.
