Poetry

Curtis Crisler

Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. Crisler, an award-winning poet/author, has a new book called Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest. He has six poetry books, two YA books, and five poetry chapbooks. He’s been published in a variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies. He’s co-editor of poetry for the museum of americana. He created the Indiana Chitlin Circuit and the poetry form called the sonastic. He’s the Indiana Poet Laureate and Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW).

2024 Poetry Shortlist: Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest

A lyrical poetic topography embodying Crisler’s “urban Midwestern sensibility” (uMs). Through his uMs lens, his poems transfigure and chronicle the humanity of the past, present, and future of Black Midwesterners (and all globe-stompers)—transforming our dead and living into one sacrosanct body that traverses this earth with our surreal and haggard breaths.

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