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Washington University in St. Louis News & Information > Faculty Experts at Washington University in St. Louis >
Professor of English and of African and African American studies in Arts & Sciences
Expertise: contemporary poetry, African-American literature, 20th-century poetry, homoerotic poetry, contemporary literature, ancient writers, ancient poets, Archilochus, Virgil, Hesiod, spirituality, race, sexuality, mortality, ancient Greek, gender, faith, morality, German, Germany, contemporary American poetry, lyric poetry
Bio:
Phillips is the highly acclaimed author of 10 collections of poetry. His first book, "In the Blood," won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and was heralded as the work of an outstanding newcomer in the field of contemporary poetry. His other books are "Cortege" (1995), a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry; "From the Devotions" (1998), a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; "Pastoral" (2000), winner of the Lambda Literary Award; "The Tether," (2001), winner of the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; "Rock Harbor" (2002); "The Rest of Love: Poems," a 2004 National Book Award finalist, for which Phillips also won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry; "Riding Westward" (2006); "Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006" (2007); and "Speak Low" (2009), a 2009 National Book Award finalist.
Two additional titles were published in the 2003-04 academic year: a translation of Sophocles' "Philoctetes" came out in September 2003, and a book of essays, "Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry," was published in May 2004.
Phillips is the recipient of, among others, a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Foundation Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes and the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The Yale Review, as well as in anthologies, including eight times in the "Best American Poetry" series, "The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997" and "The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poets."
He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006.
WUSTL Contact Information:
Education:
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M.A. in Creative Writing at Boston University
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M.A. in Latin and Classical Humanities at University of Massachusetts-Amherst
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B.A. in Greek and Latin at Harvard University
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Showing 4 Stories.
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Renowned poet's third nomination
Carl Phillips' 'Speak Low' named National Book Award finalist
Oct. 15,
2009 -- Poet Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and African American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected — for the third time — as a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in poetry. Phillips was nominated for his 10th collection of poetry, "Speak Low," published in April by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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March 25 program kicks off humanities series
Carl Phillips and the 'Art of Restlessness'
March 6,
2008 -- Distinguished poet Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and African American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, will deliver the first of three talks on poetry at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 25, in Umrath Lounge on the Danforth Campus, as part of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities (IPH) in Arts & Sciences and WUSTL's Assembly Series.
Based on the theme of "The Art of Restlessness: On Poetry and Making," Phillips' talks are free and open to the public. The March 25th program will focus on "Poetry and Resistance."
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Nominated for 'The Rest of Love: Poems'
Poet Carl Phillips is finalist for National Book Award
Oct. 27,
2004 --
Poet Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected — for the second time in a relatively short literary career — as a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in poetry. Phillips was nominated for his seventh collection of poetry, "The Rest of Love: Poems," published in February by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The National Book Awards are considered one of the most prestigious prizes in American literature.
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Top honors
Four elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
May 17,
2004 -- Carl Frieden, Jeffrey I. Gordon, John F. McDonnell and Carl Phillips can now stand proudly beside Ben Franklin, George Washington, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. Those four from Washington University in St. Louis have joined those four from history as being elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Showing 4 Stories.
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Additional Background: As part of an Air Force family, Phillips often moved. But the instability of his early life might have unknowingly started him on his pursuit of writing as a piece of the world to be carried away.
While teaching high school students Greek and Latin for eight years, Phillips found himself constantly writing on the side.
"I think of the whole process of writing as a gesture of inquiry," he said, "and there are always questions to be asked. I keep returning, it seems, to issues I've previously explored, in part because we change; we get older; our relationship to the world changes. The rest of it — prizes, awards, attention — by the time those things happen, if they do, the reason for putting a given poem down on the page has already come and gone, and I've moved on to the next thing."
Before his publishing career began, he received two prestigious awards — the George Starbuck Fellowship, which is given to the Boston University graduate student considered "the best writer" in the creative writing program, and a $10,000 Massachusetts Artist Foundation award for 10 pages of poems he submitted.
Phillips earned a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, in Greek and Latin in 1981 from Harvard University, a master's degree in Latin and classical humanities in 1983 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a master's degree in creative writing in 1993 from Boston University.
He arrived at Washington University in 1993 for a joint appointment in the Department of English and the African and African American Studies Program, both in Arts & Sciences. He directed the university's Creative Writing Program from 1996-98 and 2000-02.
Phillips has accumulated an impressive list of literary accomplishments, including being one of two poets selected by U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky in 1997 for a Witter Bynner Foundation Fellowship. In 1995, "Cortege" — only his second book — was nominated for both the National Book Critics Circle Award, considered one of the most prestigious honors in literature, and the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry.
In his poetry, Phillips writes of dreams and desires, relationships and redemption. His work has been described as inventive and homoerotic, infused with a classical richness.
Robert Pinsky called Phillips "a tremendously gifted poet" with the "unmistakable voice and subject, rhythm and cadence of an original writer."
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