Hobart and William Smith Colleges

5 May 2008 Burkard 68 Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Michael Paul Burkard 68 has recently been awarded with a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. An English major while at HWS, Burkard received his master of fine arts degree from the University of Iowas Iowa Writers Workshop. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Syracuse University as well as an instructor at Bennington Colleges Writing Seminars. Michael Burkard has over the years attracted a small but fanatical set of readers. David Wojahn wrote in Poetry. Im tempted to call him a cult figure, or a poets poet . . . he is a school of one . . . a poet whose forte is his hauntedness and his sorrowful expressive mystery. Burkard is a poet who should be read rather than explained, and in an era which our poets voices have grown benumbingly interchangeable and predictable, this quality makes Burkard all the more distinct. Burkard is internationally recognized for his poetry, which includes the collections Unsleeping (Sarabande Books, 2001), Entire Dilemma (Sarabande Books, 1998), My Secret Boat: a notebook of prose and poems (W.W. Norton, 1990) and Ruby for Grief (University of Pittsburgh, 1981). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry and many other magazines. In April 2006, Burkards work was featured a special supplement in the American Poetry Review. He has also received a Whiting Writers Award, the Poetry Society of Americas Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and two grants from both the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provides fellowships for advanced professionals in all fields with the exception of the performing arts. Guggenheim Fellows are selected based on impressive achievements in the past as well as exceptional promise for the future.