Biography
Former Poet Laureate of Colorado, Mary Crow is the author of eleven books, six of her own poetry and five of poetry translation. Her collections of poetry include Addicted to the Horizon (full-length, CW Books, 2012), The High Cost of Living (chapbook, Pudding House, 2002), I Have Tasted the Apple (full-length book, BOA Editions, Ltd., 1996), Borders (full-length, BOA, 1989), The Business of Literature (chapbook, Four Zoas, 1981) and Going Home (chapbook, Lynx House, 1979). Her books of poetry translation are Vertical Poetry: Final Poems by Roberto Juarroz (2011), Engravings Torn from Insomnia: Poems by Olga Orozco (2002), Vertical Poetry: Recent Poems by Roberto Juarroz (1992), From the Country of Nevermore: Selected Poems by Jorge Teillier (1990), and Woman Who Has Sprouted Wings: Poems by Contemporary Latin American Women Poets (1st Edition, 1984, 2nd Edition, 1987). Over 450 of her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies.
Crow has won a number of prizes including Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Colorado Council on the Arts, a Creative Writing Award from the Fulbright Commission to read her poems in Yugoslavia, a Colorado Book Award, a Translation Award from Columbia University, Fulbright research awards to Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Venezuela, a National Endowment for the Humanities year-long seminar and two NEH summer seminars. The Colorado Endowment for the Humanities funded her readings and workshops for two years in Colorado communities. In addition, she has served on the board of Associated Writing Programs, as President of the Writing Program Directors' Council of AWP, as secretary-treasurer of the American Literary Translators Association, on the board of University Press of Colorado and BkMk Press of the University of Missouri/Kansas City, selection panels of the NEA and NEH, and as Director of Creative Writing at Colorado State University where she taught for many years.
Crow has read her poems in Yugoslavia and in Israel. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian. She has also read widely in the U. S., including the San Francisco State Poetry Center, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, Cleveland State University, Old Dominion University, Long Island University, the New York Public Library, the University of Colorado, and at the Aspen Writers Conference. She has been awarded writers' residencies in the Czech Republic by Milkwood International, in Spain by Fundacion Valparaiso, and in Israel by Miskenot Sha’ananim as well as at MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Djerassi, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation in the U. S. Garrison Keillor read a poem of hers, “Saturday Matinee,” on the NPR program “The Writer's Almanac.” A tape of Crow reading is available through the American Poetry Archives of San Francisco State University.
Crow was educated at the College of Wooster (B. A. in English Literature), Indiana University (M. A. in English Literature), and the University of Iowa (where she studied literature and creative writing). She held a Teaching Assistantship at Indiana University and the University of Iowa and was also a special assistant to Paul Engle at Iowa, then the director of the Writers Workshop.
Currently Crow is circulating a new book of poems entitled Touch Here and a new book of translations Homesickness: Selected Poems of Enrique Lihn (with several co-translators). Translations of her poems into Spanish are included in the book Colorado Translations/Traducciones (2019)
