Carl Phillips Biography

Referred to as “one of America’s most original influential and productive of lyric poets” Carl Phillips is the author of a dozen books of poetry and two works of criticism. He was born in Everett Washington in 1959 and his family moved frequently around the United States. He earned a BA from Harvard an MAT from the University of Massachusetts and an MA in creative writing from Boston University. Before teaching English at the university level he taught Latin at several high schools. He is Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis where he also teaches creative writing. Phillips was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006 and since 2011 he has served as the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.
Phillips’s most recent books of poetry are Reconnaissance (2015) Silverchest (2013 nominated for the Griffin Prize) Double Shadow (2011 winner Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry and finalist for the National Book Award) and Speak Low (2009 finalist for the National Book Award). His other books include Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986-2006 Riding Westward (2006) The Rest of Love (2004) and Rock Harbor (2002).
Phillips has also published works of criticism and translation. Graywolf Press has published two collections of his essays: The Art of Daring: Risk Restlessness Imagination (2014) and Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry (2004). Oxford University Press published Phillips’s translation of Sophocles’s Philoctetes (2003).

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