Artists in Residence

2008-09: Douglas Goetsch

Douglas Goetsch has taught writing to the gifted, the incarcerated, undergraduates, post-graduates, and continuing education students since the 1980s. For fourteen years he was a member of the English faculty at Stuyvesant High School in New York City; then established and directed the creative writing program at Passages Academy, a network of schools that serves court-involved youth in New York City. He's been on staff at the Stonecoast Writing Conference, The Frost Place, The Dodge Poetry Festival, and for nine years at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Doug's books of poetry include Nobody's Hell (Hanging Loose Press, 1999), The Job of Being Everybody (Cleveland State, 2004), winner of the CSU Poetry Center Open Competition, and four prize-winning chapbooks. He is the recipient of awards from Prairie Schooner, MARGIE, Slipstream, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, many Pushcart Prize nominations, and the Donald Murray Prize for writing on the teaching of writing. His poetry, reviews and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Poetry, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The New England Review, online at PoetryDaily and Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, on the air at NPR, and in numerous anthologies.

Doug's poems have been cited for their grittiness, craft, and "wicked good humor." Mark Halliday calls them "free of baloney," and Billy Collins wrote, "It's hard to imagine a reader who could resist Goetsch's seductive opening lines." Of his most recent collection, Your Whole Life (Slipstream Press, 2007), Jeffrey Harrison wrote, "Goetsch can't keep himself from going right to [the] edges, whether he is writing about the entanglements of adult life, the cluelessness of childhood, or, as he so deftly does in several poems, both at once."

Doug received a bachelor's from Wesleyan University and a master's in American Civilization from New York University. Since 2002 he has been the editor of Jane Street Press, a not-for-profit press dedicated to publishing undiscovered masters of contemporary American poetry.

2007-2008: Margaret Rabb

After teaching for six years in the Creative Writing program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, her hometown, Margaret Rabb realized that working with energetic, dynamic student writers had become her vocation and joy. In response, she has spent the last two years in the M.F.A. program at the University of Washington in Seattle, studying, writing and teaching.

Rabb is a working poet who pays close attention to the transformative possibilities of form when cast in a contemporary voice, and enjoys working with writers who are interested in learning how they can have at their disposal such techniques as meter and traditional sound patterns, ready to resist or integrate into their own voices.

Her own intellectual interests lie in the relationship between etymology, metaphor and imaginative vision. She has pursued her fascination with the earliest texts in English, studying Old English, translating Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and integrating them into her poetry. In addition, she is currently developing a multi-genre project about Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century mystic who wrote the oldest text in English by a woman that has survived to our time.

In 2006, Coleman Barks chose Margaret Rabb's poems for the initial Rumi Prize from Arts & Letters journal. Her first book of poems, Granite Dives (published by New Issues Press at Western Michigan University in 2000), was a National Poetry Series finalist and received North Carolina's Roanoke Chowan Award. Fred Chappell wrote about her new chapbook of Carolina poems, set for publication this fall by New American Press, "Old Home mingles wry humor, dark wit, and deep sorrow in almost equal measures to produce a poetry that is strong and taut as a bowstring drawn to the archer's ear.”

Spring 2007: Martine Bellen

Martine Bellen, who served as the Department of English's Artist in Residence during the spring semester of 2007, holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Brown University. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Vulnerability of Order and Places People Dare Not Enter. Her collection Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems received the National Poetry Series Award. She is also the author of the libretto for Ovidiana, an opera based on Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Ms. Bellen has published her work in journals including Grand Street, Sulfur, Colorado Review, and New American Writing. She has held teaching appointments at New York University, Rutgers University, and Hofstra University, and she has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the American Academy of Poets.


About the Program Faculty Plan of Study Apply for Admission FAQ Artists-In-Residence And Visiting Authors Everett Southwest Literary Award The Carol Hamilton Endowed Scholarship Fund UCO Homepage College of Liberal Arts Homepage English Department Homepage	Artists in Residence 2008-09: Douglas Goetsch Douglas Goetsch has taught writing to the gifted, the incarcerated, undergraduates, post-graduates, and continuing education students since the 1980s. For fourteen years he was a member of the English faculty at Stuyvesant High School in New York City; then established and directed the creative writing program at Passages Academy, a network of schools that serves court-involved youth in New York City. He's been on staff at the Stonecoast Writing Conference, The Frost Place, The Dodge Poetry Festival, and for nine years at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Doug's books of poetry include Nobody's Hell (Hanging Loose Press, 1999), The Job of Being Everybody (Cleveland State, 2004), winner of the CSU Poetry Center Open Competition, and four prize-winning chapbooks. He is the recipient of awards from Prairie Schooner, MARGIE, Slipstream, The Chautauqua Literary Journal, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, many Pushcart Prize nominations, and the Donald Murray Prize for writing on the teaching of writing. His poetry, reviews and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Poetry, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The New England Review, online at PoetryDaily and Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, on the air at NPR, and in numerous anthologies. Doug's poems have been cited for their grittiness, craft, and "wicked good humor." Mark Halliday calls them "free of baloney," and Billy Collins wrote, "It's hard to imagine a reader who could resist Goetsch's seductive opening lines." Of his most recent collection, Your Whole Life (Slipstream Press, 2007), Jeffrey Harrison wrote, "Goetsch can't keep himself from going right to [the] edges, whether he is writing about the entanglements of adult life, the cluelessness of childhood, or, as he so deftly does in several poems, both at once." Doug received a bachelor's from Wesleyan University and a master's in American Civilization from New York University. Since 2002 he has been the editor of Jane Street Press, a not-for-profit press dedicated to publishing undiscovered masters of contemporary American poetry. 2007-2008: Margaret Rabb After teaching for six years in the Creative Writing program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, her hometown, Margaret Rabb realized that working with energetic, dynamic student writers had become her vocation and joy. In response, she has spent the last two years in the M.F.A. program at the University of Washington in Seattle, studying, writing and teaching. Rabb is a working poet who pays close attention to the transformative possibilities of form when cast in a contemporary voice, and enjoys working with writers who are interested in learning how they can have at their disposal such techniques as meter and traditional sound patterns, ready to resist or integrate into their own voices. Her own intellectual interests lie in the relationship between etymology, metaphor and imaginative vision. She has pursued her fascination with the earliest texts in English, studying Old English, translating Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and integrating them into her poetry. In addition, she is currently developing a multi-genre project about Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century mystic who wrote the oldest text in English by a woman that has survived to our time. In 2006, Coleman Barks chose Margaret Rabb's poems for the initial Rumi Prize from Arts & Letters journal. Her first book of poems, Granite Dives (published by New Issues Press at Western Michigan University in 2000), was a National Poetry Series finalist and received North Carolina's Roanoke Chowan Award. Fred Chappell wrote about her new chapbook of Carolina poems, set for publication this fall by New American Press, "Old Home mingles wry humor, dark wit, and deep sorrow in almost equal measures to produce a poetry that is strong and taut as a bowstring drawn to the archer's ear.” Spring 2007: Martine Bellen Martine Bellen, who served as the Department of English's Artist in Residence during the spring semester of 2007, holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Brown University. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Vulnerability of Order and Places People Dare Not Enter. Her collection Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems received the National Poetry Series Award. She is also the author of the libretto for Ovidiana, an opera based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ms. Bellen has published her work in journals including Grand Street, Sulfur, Colorado Review, and New American Writing. She has held teaching appointments at New York University, Rutgers University, and Hofstra University, and she has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the American Academy of Poets. NEXT PAGE