Fraser, Kathleen, 1935-

A poet and author, Fraser was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1937 and studied poetry in New York at the New School for Social Research and the Poetry Center at YMHA. She taught at the Iowa Writer's Workshop (1969), directed the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University (1972-1975), founded the literary journal How(ever), and taught creative writing at SFSU (1972-1992). She is an advocate of innovative women's writing and has worked to publish living women poets.

From the description of Kathleen Fraser papers, 1957-2006. (University of California, San Diego). WorldCat record id: 46081889

Biography

Kathleen Fraser was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1935 and attended high school in Covina, California. After discovering the work of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman and e.e. cummings while a student at Occidental College, Fraser decided to major in English literature and began to write her own poetry. She graduated in 1959 and moved to New York City where she developed her skills as a poet in workshops with Kenneth Koch and Robert Lowell at the New School for Social Research and with Stanley Kunitz at the Poetry Center at the YMHA.

In Kunitz's poetry workshop, Fraser met her first husband, the poet Jack Marshall, whom she married in 1960. Their son David was born in 1966, and soon thereafter they relocated to San Francisco. In 1969, they were both offered teaching positions at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. After their separation in 1970, Fraser became director of the Poetry Center (1972-1975) and professor of creative writing (1972-1992) at San Francisco State University. In addition to teaching poetry workshops and seminars, she founded the American Poetry Archives and compiled a video anthology featuring women poets entitled WOMEN WORKING IN LITERATURE (1992).

Responding to the need for a place to discuss women's language issues and to publish experimentalist poetry by women, Fraser founded the journal HOW(ever). From 1983 to 1992, Fraser published the work of living women poets and recovered the neglected work of modernist women poets such as H.D., Mina Loy, and Mary Butts. Fraser continued this investigation into innovative women's writing through the online journal How2 which she edited from 1999 to 2000. Fraser handed over the position as editor-in-chief to Australian scholar Ann Vickery in 2001 to allow more time for her own writing.

Fraser has published fifteen volumes of poetry: CHANGE OF ADDRESS AND OTHER POEMS (1966), STILTS, SOMERSAULTS AND HEADSTANDS: GAME POEMS BASED ON A PAINTING BY PETER BREUGHEL (1968), IN DEFIANCE OF THE RAINS (1969), LITTLE NOTES TO YOU FROM LUCAS STREET: POEMS 1970-1971 (1972), WHAT I WANT (1974), MAGRITTE SERIES (1977), NEW SHOES (1978), EACH NEXT: NARRATIVES (1980), SOMETHING (EVEN HUMAN VOICES) IN THE FOREGROUND, A LAKE (1984), NOTES PRECEDING TRUST (1987), BOUNDAYR (1987), FROM A TEXT -- (1993), WHEN NEW TIME FOLDS UP (1993), WING (1995) and IL CUORE : THE HEART, SELECTED POEMS 1970-1995 (1996). Selections from her work were recorded on the cassette audiotape EVEN HUMAN VOICES (1986). She has also published a collection of critical essays entitled TRANSLATING THE UNSPEAKABLE: POETRY AND THE INNOVATIVE NECESSITY (2000).

Fraser's poetry has been published in numerous journals and magazines since the late 1950s, and she has given readings and talks on poetry across the United States, as well as in Italy and Japan. Her poetry is characterized by a technically sophisticated deconstruction of language that is highly innovative. In addition to displaying her technical skill, Fraser's poetry is also intensely emotional, meditative, playful, and lyrical.

Fraser divides her time between San Francisco and Rome with her second husband, the philosopher and playwright Arthur K. Bierman, whom she married in 1985, and she continues to be active as a poet, teacher and scholar.

From the guide to the Kathleen Fraser Papers, 1957 - 2006, (University of California, San Diego. Geisel Library. Mandeville Special Collections Library.)