Jeffrey Skinner

Jeffrey Skinner

Professor Emeritus

Poet, playwright, and essayist Jeffrey Skinner has been awarded a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. Skinner’s Guggenheim project involves a conflation of contemporary physics, poetry, and theology. He will be the June, 2015 Artist in Residence at the CERN particle accelerator.

His most recent prose book, The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets, was published to wide attention and acclaim, including a full page positive review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. His most recent collection of poems, Glaciology, was chosen in 2012 as winner in the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and published by Southern Illinois University press in Fall, 2013.

Skinner has published five previous collections: Late Stars (Wesleyan University Press), A Guide to Forgetting (a winner in the 1987 National Poetry series, chosen by Tess Gallagher, published by Graywolf Press), The Company of Heaven (Pitt Poetry Series), Gender Studies, (Miami University Press), and Salt Water Amnesia (Ausable Press). He has edited two anthologies, Last Call: Poems of Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance; and Passing the Word: Poets and Their Mentors. His numerous chapbooks include Salt Mother, Animal Dad, which was chosen by C.K. Williams for the New York City Center for Book Arts Poetry Competition in 2005. Over the years Skinner’s poems have appeared in most of the country’s premier literary magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, FENCE, Bomb, DoubleTake, and The Georgia, Iowa, and Paris Reviews.

Also a playwright, Skinner’s play Down Range had a successful run at Theatre 3 in New York City in the Spring of 2009, and another in Chicago in 2014. His play Dream On had its premier production in February of 2007, by the Cardboard Box Collaborative Theatre in Philadelphia. Other of Skinner’s plays have been finalists in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Conference competition, and winners in various play contests.

Skinner’s writing has gathered grants, fellowships, and awards from such sources as the National Endowment for the Arts (1986, & 2006), the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the state arts agencies of Connecticut, Delaware, and Kentucky. He has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, McDowell, Vermont Studios, and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown. His work has been featured numerous times on National Public Radio. In 2002 Skinner served as Poet-in-Residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut.

He is President of the Board of Directors, and Editorial Consultant, for Sarabande Books, a literary publishing house he cofounded with his wife, poet Sarah Gorham. He teaches creative writing and English at The University of Louisville.

 

Courses Taught

Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or 105. The writing of poetry, fiction, and drama; analysis of professional writings. Class discussion and individual conferences.
Prerequisite: ENGL 202. Note: Schedule of Courses indicates sections devoted to poetry, fiction, and drama respectively. Each section focuses on the writing of either fiction or poetry or drama; analysis of professional technique and of student writing. Class discussion and individual conferences.
Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or 105. A study of selected poetry in English since 1955. Historical period: post 1900.
Prerequisite: ENGL 305 and consent of instructor. Multi-genre creative writing course designed for students who wish to increase their aptitude as writers of drama, fiction or poetry.
Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or 105; ENGL 300 or 310. Note: Approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR). Formerly ENGL-322; credit may not be earned for this course by students with credit for ENGL-322. Study of selected works, in a variety of genres, from 1960 to the present day. Taught with attention to historical and cultural context. Historical period: post 1900.
Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or 105; ENGL 300 or 310. Note: Approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR). An intensive study in the works from a particular literary movement ( e.g. Magical Realism, Postmodern Fiction, or Visual Poetry). May be repeated once for credit. Historical period: varies by semester-see schedule of courses.
Prerequisite: ENGL 305 or 403 or consent of instructor. Concentration on a given form.
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor or enrollment in a degree program in English. Recommended prior coursework: ENGL 503, ENGL 504, or equivalent. A workshop in the writing of poetry, fiction, and drama, involving the reading and analysis of manuscripts and regular individual conferences.
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor or enrollment in a degree program in English. Recommend prior coursework: ENGL 503, ENGL 504, or equivalent; and ENGL 606 or equivalent. A creative writing workshop similar to ENGL 606, but also allowing interested students to pursue bases for structuring larger and more ambitious works.

 

Educational Background

    MFA Columbia University

      Teaching Areas

        Creative Writing

          Research Interests

            Contemporary poetry, Drama

              Select Publications:

              6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets, memoir/advice/humor, Sarabande Books Inc. 2012 Glaciology, Poems, Southern Illinois University Press 2013

              Down Range, play, production schedules September 2014, Genesis Theater Productions, Chicago, IL Salt Water Amnesia, poems, Ausable Press, 2005

              Dream On, play, production scheduled for Feburary, 2007, Cardboard Box Collaborative, Philadelphia, PA