David Starkey (poet)

Last updated
David Starkey Davidstarkeypoetportrait.jpg
David Starkey

David Starkey (born June 28, 1962) is an American poet and academic, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California.

Contents

Early life

David Starkey was born in Sacramento, California, in 1962 to Frank and Margaret Starkey. He lives in Santa Barbara, California with his wife, Sandy. He was educated at the University of California, Davis (BA, 1984); the University of California, Los Angeles (MA, 1986); and Louisiana State University (MFA, 1990).

Career

Starkey is a professor of English at Santa Barbara City College, where he directs the creative writing program. Prior to teaching at SBCC, he was an assistant professor at Francis Marion University and associate professor at North Central College. He was a Fulbright-Hays Scholar in India in 1994 and a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oulu, Finland in 1999.

Starkey has published more than 500 poems in literary magazines and has authored eleven books of poetry, authored or co-authored five textbooks, and edited or co-edited six anthologies. He is also a book reviewer for the Santa Barbara Independent . He served as Santa Barbara's third poet laureate, from 2009-2011, [1] has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, [2] and is the publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press, a Santa Barbara-based small press that specializes in the publication of poetry. [3]

Writing in The Georgia Review , Paul Zimmer praised Starkey’s “wonderful language” and “amazing lines,” concluding, “Starkey is an entertaining and resourceful poet.” [4] Of Like a Soprano, Starkey's poetry collection based on The Sopranos TV series, cast member Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti, called the “episode by episode distillation of the series…potent, loving and inspired.” [5] Critic Arthur Kayzakian noted in Poetry International that the book “never misses a dark heartbeat” allowing the reader “to delve deeper into the psyche of Tony Soprano.” [6]

Reviewing Living Blue in the Red States, an anthology of essays exploring the divide between the red states and blue states, Andy Fogle wrote in PopMatters that the book “reveals the sensitivity, openness, and respect which the best (blue or red) minds can offer. I think that there are at least a couple of essays that strident Republicans would appreciate and, perhaps more importantly, those same essays might teach some Democrats a thing or two about temperance and true tolerance.” [7] Booklist noted that Living Blue in the Red States contributors display “passion for their regions and elegance in expressing their anger, frustration, and longing to close—or at least understand—the political divide.” [8]

Perhaps best known for his popular textbook Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief, [9] Starkey's pedagogy is based on collaborations with the late Wendy Bishop, which focused on employing composition studies to aid in the teaching of creative writing. In an article in College Composition and Communication entitled “The Place of Composition in Creative Writing Studies,” Doug Hesse identifies Starkey as a writer-teacher working “at the fringe of both fields—perhaps tolerantly or even compellingly so.” [10]

Bibliography

Poetry

Textbooks

Anthologies

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Hall</span> American writer

Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was an American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Hall was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard, and Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Levine (poet)</span> American poet

Philip Levine was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al Young</span> American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter (1939–2021)

Albert James Young was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Mason (writer)</span> American poet

David Mason is an American writer and the former Poet Laureate of Colorado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Jarman</span> American poet and critic

Mark F. Jarman is an American poet and critic often identified with the New Narrative branch of the New Formalism; he was co-editor with Robert McDowell of The Reaper throughout the 1980s. Centennial Professor of English, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University, he is the author of eleven books of poetry, three books of essays, and a book of essays co-authored with Robert McDowell. He co-edited the anthology Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism with David Mason.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Felipe Herrera</span> American writer (born 1948)

Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.

Hans Ansgar Ostrom is an American professor, writer, editor, and scholar. Ostrom is a professor of African American Studies and English the University of Puget Sound (1983–present), where he teaches courses on African-American literature, creative writing, and poetry as a genre. He is known for his authorship of various books on African-American studies and creative writing, and novels including Three to Get Ready, Honoring Juanita, and Without One, as well as The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976–2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Collier (poet)</span> American writer and academic

Michael Robert Collier is an American poet, teacher, creative writing program administrator and editor. He has published five books of original poetry, a translation of Euripides' Medea, a book of prose pieces about poetry, and has edited three anthologies of poetry. From 2001 to 2004 he was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. As of 2011, he is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park and the poetry editorial consultant for Houghton Mifflin.

Joseph Stroud is an American poet.

Red Hen Press is an American non-profit press located in Pasadena, California, and specializing in the publication of poetry, literary fiction, and nonfiction. The press is a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and was a finalist for the 2013 AWP Small Press Publisher Award. The press has been featured in Publishers Weekly,Kirkus Reviews, and Independent Publisher.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a Belgian-American poet, translator, professor, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, These Many Rooms. Her collection, Small Gods of Grief, won the 2001 Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry. A New Hunger, was an American Library Association Notable Book in 2008. She is the author of Artémis, a collection of French poems, published in Belgium. Her chapbook Rooms Remembered appeared from Sungold Editions in 2018.

Wendy Barker was an American poet. She was Poet-in-Residence and the Pearl LeWinn Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she taught since 1982.

Christopher Buckley is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valerie Martínez</span> American writer

Valerie Martínez is an American poet, writer, educator, arts administrator, consultant, and collaborative artist. She served as the poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico from 2008 to 2010.

Albert Flynn DeSilver is an American poet, memoirist, novelist, meditation teacher, speaker, and workshop leader. He received a BFA in photography from the University of Colorado in 1991 and an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. DeSilver served as Marin County California's very first Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. His work has appeared in more than one hundred literary journals worldwide including ZYZZYVA, New American Writing, Hanging Loose, Jubilat, Exquisite Corpse, Jacket (Australia), Poetry Kanto (Japan), Van Gogh’s Ear (France), and many others. DeSilver has taught for many years in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He is the author of several books of poems and the memoir Beamish Boy, (2012) which Kirkus Reviews called "a beautifully written memoir, poignant and inspirational".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Spacks</span> American writer

Barry Bernard Spacks, was a prize-winning poet, novelist and first poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Trelles</span> American poet

Emma Trelles is a Latina poet, writer, professor, and served as poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California from 2021-2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucille Lang Day</span> American poet

Lucille Lang Day is an American poet, writer, and science and health educator. Day has authored or edited 20 books and is a contributor to over 50 anthologies. She is best known as a poet and writer for her award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, for her integration of science imagery and concepts into poetry and for advocating use of poetry as a tool in environmental activism. As a science and health educator, her many achievements have included promoting science education for girls and serving as codirector of Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community, a project that was funded by the National Institutes of Health and aimed to make biomedical science more accessible to underrepresented minorities.

John Martin Finlay was an American poet and writer of essays, reviews, fiction, letters, and diaries.

References

  1. Noozhawk (29 April 2009). "David Starkey Crowned City's New Poet Laureate".
  2. Media, American Public. "The Writer's Almanac: David Starkey". writersalmanac.publicradio.org.
  3. "Gunpowder Press - Poets & Writers". www.pw.org. 2 April 2017.
  4. "Fall 2001 - The Georgia Review". thegeorgiareview.com.
  5. "Like a Soprano". servinghousebooks.com. 17 September 2014.
  6. "Review of David Starkey's Like a Soprano". 16 April 2015.
  7. "Living Blue in the Red States by David Starkey". 25 November 2007.
  8. "Living Blue in the Red States, edited by David Starkey - Booklist Online". www.booklistonline.com.
  9. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-12-15. Retrieved 2017-08-31.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. "AWP: Conference Schedule". www.awpwriter.org.