Campbell McGrath has spent the past thirty years transforming his life into poetry. He is the author of twelve full-length collections, most recently Fever of Unknown Origin (Knopf, 2023) and Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems, one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Poetry Books of 2019. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker and Paris Review and has been published in scores of literary journals, quarterlies, and anthologies. He has also translated Aristophanes, written two libretti for experimental operas with the composer Orlando Garcia, and played in a punk rock band.
McGrath’s poetry has been recognized with some of the country’s top literary prizes, including the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, a USA Knight Fellowship, and a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. In 2019, his book XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
McGrath teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University, where he is the Philip and Patricia Frost Professor of Creative Writing and a Distinguished University Professor of English. Born in Chicago, he has lived in Miami Beach for three decades and plans on staying with the ship until it is reclaimed by the Atlantic Ocean.
-
More Campbell McGrath
Text: Read poetry by McGrath at the Academy of American Poets
Video: McGrath speaks at TEDxCoconutGrove
Text: Four poems by McGrath at The Miami Rail
-
Photo by Eric Felipe-Barkin.