Van K. Brock

Poet

Fayetteville, AR
Arkansas US

Author's Bio

Van K. Brock is author of Lightered: New & Collected Poems (2005), Unspeakable Strangers (poems on the Holocaust, 1995), The Window (1981), a hand-sewn chapbook, The Hard Essential Landscape (!979), & other collections. He was for several decades at Florida State University and was co-director of the writing program. He helped found The Southeast Review (then Sundog), International Quarterly (1993-1999), &, in 1973, Anhinga Press, which he directed for 25 years. In 2000, Anhinga Press dedicated Snakebird: 30 Years of Anhinga Poets to Brock and in 2006 named its Florida Poets Series for Brock. He will be honored in October 2014 at the Anhinga Press 40th anniversary celebration in Tampa, Florida. His poems from Unspeakable Strangers, (“The Hindenburg” and “This Way to the Gas”) wre in the new edition of Charles Fishman’s edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust in 2007.

Publications & Prizes

Anthologies:
Snakebird: Thirty Years of Anhinga Poets (Anhinga Press, 2000)
,
The Made Thing (University of Arkansas Press, 1999)
,
Holocaust Poetry (St. Martin's Press, 1995)
Books:
Lightered: New and Selected Poems (Anhinga Press, 2005)
,
Unspeakable Strangers (Anhinga Press, 1995)
,
The Window (Chase Avenue Press, 1981)
,
The Hard Essential Landscape (University of Central Florida Press, 1979)
Journals: ,
Omega: Online Literary Journal
, , , ,
The New Yorker
Performance:
New Letters on the Air, NPR and CD (2006)
Prizes won: 

Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, Best Poems of 1965 & Best Poems of 1972, Pacific Books; Heart of America Poetry Awards (H. Jay Sharp Prize for best poem by an American student); First Prize, Florida Poetry Contests, Florida Review, 1977;
Rockefeller Fellowship from Center for the Study of Southern Culture; First Featured Poet, Poets in the South I/I (42-page feature); First Florida Individual Artist Award in Poetry, 1977; Florida Individual Artist Award, 1982-83. In 2000, Snakebird: 30 Years of Anhinga Poets, dedicated was to his, a poem of his as frontispiece. in 2005, Anhinga Press began the Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series.

Personal Favorites

What I'm reading now: 
Salt and Iron by Greg Byrd, In the House of My Fear by Joel Agee, Personal Impressions by Isaiah Berlin, Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America by Timothy O'Grady, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steve Hahn

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Prefers to work with: 
Any
Fluent in: 
English
Born in: 
Boston
Raised in: 
Atlanta, GA
Georgia
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: May 07, 2014