The Poetry Project

Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel Mackey is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry, Four for Trane (Golemics, 1978), Septet for the End of Time (Boneset, 1983), Outlantish (Chax Press, 1992), Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (Moving Parts Press, 1994), Four for Glenn (Chax Press, 2002), Anuncio’s Last Love Song (Three Count Pour, 2013), Outer Pradesh (Anomalous Press, 2014), and Moment’s Omen (Selva Oscura, 2015); six books of poetry, Eroding Witness (University of Illinois Press, 1985), School of Udhra (City Lights Books, 1993), Whatsaid Serif (City Lights Books, 1998), Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), Nod House (New Directions, 2011), and Blue Fasa (New Directions, 2015); and the prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which four volumes have been published: Bedouin Hornbook (Callaloo Fiction Series, 1986; second edition: Sun & Moon Press, 1997), Djbot Baghostus’s Run (Sun & Moon Press, 1993), Atet A.D. (City Lights Books, 2001), Bass Cathedral (New Directions, 2008) and Late Arcade (New Directions, 2017); the first three of these have been published together as From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Volumes 1-3 (New Directions, 2010). He is also the author of two books of criticism, Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (Cambridge University Press, 1993; paper edition: University of Alabama Press, 2000) and Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). He is editor of the literary magazine Hambone, whose twenty-first issue appeared in 2015, and coeditor, with Art Lange, of the anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993). His honors include election to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in 2001, the National Book Award in poetry for Splay Anthem in 2006, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society in 2008, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2014, and Yale’s Bollingen Prize for American Poetry in 2015. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, and teaches at Duke University, where he is the Reynolds Price Professor of English.