Rennie McQuilkin

Rennie McQuilkin is the former poet laureate of Connecticut. He taught English and Creative Writing at secondary schools including Phillips Academy (Andover), the Loomis-Chaffee School, and Miss Porter’s School. In 1992 he cofounded the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which he directed for nine years at Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut. His poetry has appeared in the Atlantic, Poetry, the American Scholar, the Southern Review, the Yale Review, and many other publications. The author of thirteen poetry collections, he received several poetry awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Center for the Book’s Lifetime Achievement Award as well as its 2010 poetry award for The Weathering: New and Selected Poems. He was also the publisher of Antrim House Books. McQuilkin died at the age of eighty-eight on July 1, 2024.