Brenda Coultas

Brenda Coultas is an American poet.

Life

She was raised in Indiana, often working odd jobs such as welding.

She graduated from Naropa University, studying with Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. Coultas also taught at Naropa University.

She moved to New York City in 1994. With Eleni Sikelianos, she worked at the Poetry Project in NYC, edited the Poetry Project Newsletter

In 2003, she was a visiting poet at Long Island University. She lives in the Bowery.

Her work has also been published Brooklyn Rail, Trickhouse, the Denver Review, and in two collections: An Anthology of New (American) Poets (Talisman 1996), and conjunctions 35 "American Poetry: States of the Art" (Fall 2000).

Awards

• 2004 Norma Farber First Book Award, A Handmade Museum
• Greenwald grant from the Academy of American Poets
• 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)
• Lower Manhattan Cultural Council artist-in-residence.

Work

• "The Bluegrass State". Fascile (two). winter '05-'06. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "The Rat and The Flowerpot". Pom2. 2001. ISSN 1536-5808.
• "The Diary of Found Foods". trickhouse. 2. Fall 2008.
• "Elementary Principles at Seventy-Two". Poetry Society of America.
• "from The Bowery Project". Tool Magazine (1).

Poetry

• Early Films. Rodent Press. 1996. ISBN 978-1-887289-15-3.
• The Bowery Project. Leroy Chapbook Series. 2003. ISBN 978-99909-0-955-5.
• A Handmade Museum. Coffee House Press. 2003. ISBN 978-1-56689-143-1.
• The marvelous bones of time: excavations and explanations : poetry. Coffee House Press. 2007. ISBN 978-1-56689-204-9.

Anthologies

• Rosamond S. King, ed. (2004). Voices of the city: Newark reads poetry 2004. Hanging Loose Press. ISBN 978-1-931236-42-3.
• Rattapallax. Repossessed Head Press. 2003.
• Mary Burger, ed. (2006). An apparent event: a Second Story Books anthology. 2nd Story Books.

Reviews

Brenda Coultas’ collection of formally innovative fictions, Early Films, seems like McCain and Deanovich to be influenced by the casually flat tone of New York School poetry, but also like them in wanting to use that tradition for new ends. Coultas also shares with Deanovich a concern for ordinary middle American folks. But where Deanovich treats her characters with generous irony, Early Films is gloriously vicious. This is not a book for the faint hearted. Indeed its concerns with pathology, murder, and all sorts of country bumpkin (and urban bumpkin) grotesquerie reminds me most, perversely, of the cheap thrills of a horror genre writer like Joe Lansdale.

More than an investigative poetics, then, Coultas has created a poetry of archaeology. The investigative technique uncovers a vast landscape of soil, artifacts and spirits. The authenticity of the tales, of the histories, seems irrelevant in this light. The important point is that Coultas is working, that she is digging, and, in continuing to dig, carrying her poetry into unique and fresh territory.

External links

• "every other day", Kicking Wind, 19 July 2006
• "Brenda Coultas", PennSound