Karen Swenson

Karen Swenson (born July 29, 1936 New York City) is an American poet and journalist.

Life

She grew up in Chappaqua, New York, and studied at Barnard College and New York University.

Swenson has been Poet-in-Residence at Skidmore College, the University of Idaho, Denver University, Clark University, Scripps College and Barnard College. She taught at City College, New York.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, "Saturday Review", and "The New Yorker".

Awards

• 1993 National Poetry Series, for The Landlady in Bangkok
• Lannan Residency
• Yaddo Residencies

Works

• A daughter's latitude: new & selected poems. Copper Canyon Press. 1999. ISBN 978-1-55659-094-8.
• The landlady in Bangkok. Copper Canyon Press. 1994. ISBN 978-1-55659-067-2.
• A sense of direction. Smith. 1989. ISBN 978-0-912292-85-4.
• East-West: poems. Confluence Press. 1980. ISBN 978-0-917652-23-3.
• An attic of ideals. Doubleday. 1974. ISBN 978-0-385-08073-6.

Stories

• "Roaches and Redheads". Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories. Travelers' Tales. 2002. ISBN 978-1-885211-75-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)

Anthologies

• Hilda Raz, ed. (2001). "I Have Lost the Address of my Country". Best of Prairie schooner: fiction and poetry. Translator Hilda Raz. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-8972-7.

Edited

• Cold counsel: women in Old Norse literature and mythology : a collection of essays. Routledge. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8153-1966-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)

Reviews

For a poet, the value of travel has more to do with the self a writer brings to a place than any impression he or she takes from the landscape or the people there. Karen Swenson has traveled extensively over the past four decades, and in A Daughter's Latitude she reports not only on visits to countries like Malaysia and Thailand but also on her return trips to the provinces of childhood memory.

External links

• Marlene D. Allen (2002). "Karen Swenson". In Catherine Cucinella (ed.). Contemporary American women poets: an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-31783-5.
• Janet Palmer Mullaney, ed. (1998). "Karen Swenson". Truthtellers of the times: interviews with contemporary women poets. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06680-3.
• "Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Karen Swenson, a Poet, Journalist and World Traveler, at Centenary Nov. 15-19"