Kinnell, Galway, 1927-2014

Poet and professor.

American poet.

Galway Kinnell, born in 1927, was a poet and professor. Kinnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island, received his BA from Princeton University and his MA from the University of Rochester in New York. His teaching career began at Alfred University in New York where he taught English. Since then he has held professorships at universities literally throughout the world, from Columbia University to the University of Grenoble in France and from the University of Iran, Teheran to the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. He has been a visiting professor or poet at such distinguished universities and colleges as Sarah Lawrence, Queens College of CUNY, Brandeis University, Skidmore College and the University of California, Irvine. He was visiting writer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and resident writer at Deya Institute, Mallorca, Spain. In addition to his teaching duties, Kinnell has traveled extensively giving poetry readings.

Kinnell's poetry began appearing in poetry magazines and anthologies in 1953. In 1960 his first volume of poetry, What a Kingdom It Was, was published. By 1980 ten books of his poetry had been published. Although most prolific as a poet, Kinnell's other published works include: a novel, Black Light ; a children's book, How the Alligator Missed Breakfast ; illustrations for a book of poetry by Pati Hill; and translations of such writers as Yvan Goll, Rene Hardy, and Francois Villon.

The quality of his work over the years has brought to Kinnell many awards and prizes, such as the Ingram Merrill Foundation award, an Amy Lowell traveling fellowship, the London Translation Prize, and the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Not least among these is the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work Selected Poems .