 Associate Professor of EnglishOffice: Denison 195 Telephone: 303-492-2871 E-mail: ruthellen.kocher@colorado.edu |
Research and teaching interests
Creative writing (poetry); poetics; American modernism; African-American literature, especially women writers; modern and contemporary literature
Education
Ph.D., Arizona State University, 1999
MFA, Arizona State University, 1994
B.A., Pennsylvania State University, 1990
Publications
Books
One Girl Babylon (poetry). New Issues Press, 2003.
When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (poetry). New Issues Press, 2002
Desdemona’s Fire (poetry).Lotus Press/Michigan State Univ. Press, 1999
Essays
"Yellow Girl: Black Life, White Life, and the ‘Stranger’ in the Mirror." Black Arts Quarterly, 7.1, Fall 2002
"Revisiting a Site of Cultural Bondage: JoAnn Gibson Robinson’s Boycott Memoir." Women as Sites of Culture: Women’s Roles in Cultural Formation from the Renaissance to the 20th Century, ed. Susan Shifrin. Ashgate, 2002
"O Blessed Verse: Obstructing Truth and the Sanctity of Transgression in Student Poetry." 2001 Creative Writing/Creative Teaching: Pedagogy Forum Handbook. Associated Writing Programs, 2001
With Keith Miller, "Shattering Kidnapper’s Heavenly Union: Interargumentation in Douglass’s Oratory and Narrative." Approaches to Teaching Frederick Douglass. Modern Langauge Association, 1999, 81-87
Poems published in
Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, ninth letter, McSweeney, Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, West Bank, Callaloo, 27.4, Clackamus Literary Review, Washington Square Review, Mochilla Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, Sojourner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Kalliope, She’r, Missouri Review, Willow Springs, African American Review, Gettysburg Review, Antoch, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, West Branch, ditch, Superstition Review, The Cartier Street Review
Poems anthologized in
Garden of Forking Paths: An Anthology of Creative Writers, ed. Beth Anstanding and Eric Killough. Prentice Hall, forthcoming
From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, ed. Camille T. Dungy, Matt O'Donnell, & Jeffrey Thomson, Gerald Stern (Foreword). Persea Books, 2008.
The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, ed. Dominic Luxford. McSweeney’s Books, 2007
Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, ed. Marjorie Maddox, Jerry Wemple. Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2005
New Sister Voices, ed. Allison Joseph. Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2005
New Bones: Contemporary Black Writers in America, ed. Kevin Quashie, Keith Miller, Joyce Lausch. Prentice Hall, 2000
Literary/trade essays published in
Poets and Writers, Hayden’s Ferry Review
Selected honors and awards
Green Rose Prize, New Issues Press, 2001
Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, Lotus Press, 1998
Tom McAfee Discovery Feature, The Missouri Review, 1994
Fellow, Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, 1990
Editorial positions
Contributing editor, Poets and Writers
Current projects
Domina and The First Gods (poems)
the gigan book (poems)
Sl*t Book (poetic narrative and digital photography)
The Yellow Girl Diaries (creative nonfiction)