Forrest Gander, American poet, (b. 1956) is the author of various books of poetry, essays, and work in translation.

Life

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Born in the Mojave Desert in 1956, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University and moved to Mexico, where he began to assemble work for Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women, a bilingual anthology. Gander is the recipient of honors including: The Whiting Writers' Award, a Howard Foundation Award, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North American Writing, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yaddo. He is Professor of English and Comparative Literatures at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Writing

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His poetry is lyrical, but often complex rhythmically and structurally. Critic Karla Huston, writing in "Library Journal," notes that, "Owing to the poems' placement on the page and the near absence of punctuation, the reader is propelled through the verse, left with a sense of urgency and awe." Because of the frequency and particularity of Gander's references to the Virginia landscape, Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate, calls him "a Southern poet of a relatively rare kind, a restlessly experimental writer."

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