Annie Finch

b. 1956

Photo by Val Schaff.

Annie Finch is a poet, translator, cultural critic, and performance artist. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including Earth Days: Poems, Chants, and Spellsin Five Directions (Nirala Publications, 2023); Eve (Story Line Press, 1997) and Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003), both finalists for the National Poetry Series; Spells: New and Selected Poems and The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells (2019) from Wesleyan University Press;and the verse play Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto inSeven Dreams (Red Hen Press, 2010), winner of the Saraswati Award. Finch’s work has appeared in The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2011) and The Norton Anthology of World Literature and has been translated into eight languages.

Finch is the editor of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books, 2020) as well as nine anthologies of poetic craft. Her other books on
poetics include The Ghost of Meter (University of Michigan Press, 1993); A Poet’s Craft (University of Michigan Press, 2011); The Body of Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2005); and How to Scan a Poem (Poetry Witch Press, 2023). Her verse plays and theater rituals have been produced at venues including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, Deepak HomeBase, and the American Opera Project. She serves as fellow emerita of the Black Earth Institute and on the advisory board of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.

Finch is a winner of the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award for lifetime contributions to the art and craft of versification. She lives in New York City and has presented her work across the United States, in India and Mexico, and throughout Africa and Europe.

Poems by Annie Finch

Bibliography

WRITINGS:

The Encyclopedia of Scotland (poem; produced by Fiction Music Ensemble, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, 1982) Caribou (Amherst, MA), 1982.
The Mermaid Tragedy (play), performed in a staged reading at University of Houston, Houston, TX, 1986.
The Moon and the Snake (play), performed at Mama Bear's Bookstore, Oakland, CA, 1989.
(And produced, directed and performed in) Life by the Ocean (play), performed at Poets Theatre Festival at Theater Artaud, San Francisco, CA, 1990.
The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor), 1993, reprinted with a new preface, 2000.
(Editor, author of introduction, and contributor) A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women, Story Line (Ashland, OR), 1994.
The Furious Sun in Her Mane (song cycle), performed at Greenwich Music School in New York, 1994.
Catching the Mermother (poems), Aralia (West Chester, PA), 1996.
Eve, Story Line, 1997.
(Editor and author of introduction) After New Formalism, Story Line, 1999.
Walk With Me, music by Bruce Rockwell, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (Festival), 2000.
(With Stefania de Kennessey) A Cantata for My Daughter, Women's Choir of New York, 2000.
Season Poems, Calliope Press (Los Angles, CA), 2001.
(Editor, with Johanna Keller and Candace McClelland) Carolyn Kizer: Perspectives on Her Life and Work, CavanKerry Press (Fort Lee, NJ), 2001.
(Editor, with Kathrine Varnes) An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2002.
Marie Moving: An Epic Poem, Story Line Press (Brownsville, OR), 2002.
(With Lisa Siders-Kenney) A Creation Story,, Performance and Time Art Series, Cincinnati, 2002.
Marina Tsetyaeva: A Captive Spirit, music by Deborah Drattell, directed by Anne Bogart, American Opera Projects, New York, 2003
Calendars, Tupelo Press (Dorset, VT), 2003.
The Poems of Louise Labe, (translation), University of Chicago Press, in press.
The Heart of Poetry: Essays on Women and Poetics (Poets on Poetry Series), University of Michigan Press, in press.
(Editor, with Debbie Brown and Maxine Kumin) Poets on Poetics, Oxford University Press, in press.

Poems represented in journals, such as Agni Review, American Voice, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, Field, (How) ever, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Many Mountains Moving, Marlboro Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Salt, Southwest Review, Thirteenth Moon, and Yale Review; and in anthologies, among them Walking between the Stars: A Far-Reaching Anthology, edited by Francesca Dubie, Third Road, 1990; An Introduction to Poetry, edited by X. J. Kennedy, 8th edition, by Dana Gioia, HarperCollins, 1993; and A Contemporary American Anthology: The Unitarian Universalist Poets, edited by Jennifer Bosveldt, Pudding House, 1994; The Muse Strikes Back: A Poetic Response by Women to Men, edited by Kathryn McAlpine and Gail White, Story Line, 1997; Anthology of World Poetry, edited by Katherine Washburn and John Major, Norton (New York City), 1998; Yale Poets on Twentieth-Century Art, Yale Art Gallery, 2000; The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, edited by Phillis Levin, Penguin, 2000; The Poets' Grimm, Story Line, 2002; and The Paradelle: An Anthology, Red Hen, in prsss. Contributor of critical essays to periodicals, such as Poetry Flash, Chronicle, American Poetry Review, Associated Writing Programs Chronicle, American Poetry Review, How(ever), Hellas, Legacy, and Cumberland Poetry Review; and books, among them Meter in English: A Symposium, edited by David Baker, University of Arkansas Press, 1996; Telling the Barn Swallow: Essays in Honor of Maxine Kumin, edited by Emily Grosholz, University of New England Press, 1996; and By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, edited by Molly McQuade, Graywolf (Minneapolis), 1999. As translator has contributed to the periodical Studi Medievali as well as Anthology of World Poetry, edited by Katherine Washburn and John Major, Norton, 1998. Collaboratively worked on choir, opera, and other music pieces, as well as on art exhibitions. Editorial Advisory Board, Aunt Lute Anthology of Women Writers, Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1999—. Some work appears under the name A. R. C. Finch.