Introduction
Major Jackson (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American poet and professor. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Roll Deep (W.W. Norton, 2015), Holding Company (W.W. Norton, 2010) and Hoops (W.W. Norton, 2006), finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Award Circle.
Life
He earned degrees from Temple University and the University of Oregon. He is a professor of English at the University of Vermont and a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. He serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.
His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Poetry, and Tin House. His poetry has received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Parnassus, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry 2004 (Scribner, 2004), The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses, (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) Schwerkraft, From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009), and The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). In 2013 he edited Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, published by Library of America.
Honors and awards
His honors include a 2003 Whiting Award, a 1995 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and a 2003 Witter Bynner Fellowship. He was poet in residence at The Frost Place in 2004, and has served as a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Lowell., and the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College.
Poetry collections
- Roll Deep: Poems. W W Norton & Co Inc. 2015. ISBN 978-0-393-24689-6.
- Holding Company: Poems. W W Norton & Co Inc. 2010. ISBN 978-0-393-07080-4.
- Hoops: Poems. W W Norton & Co Inc. 2006. ISBN 978-0-393-33037-3.
- Leaving Saturn: poems. University of Georgia Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8203-2342-8.