Mark Halliday

Mark Halliday. Courtesy Indiana University Bloomington.

Mark Halliday (born 1949) is a noted American poet, academic, and literary critic.

Life

Halliday was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He earned a B.A. (1971) and an M.A. (1976) from Brown University, and a Ph.D. in English literature in 1983 from Brandeis University, where he studied with poets Allen Grossman and Frank Bidart.

He has taught English literature and writing at Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania, Western Michigan University, Indiana University. Since 1996, he has taught at Ohio University, where, in 2012, he was awarded the rank of distinguished professor.

He is married to poet J. Allyn Rosser.

He served as the 1994 poet in residence at The Frost Place. His poems were included in several annual editions of The Best American Poetry series and of the Pushcart Prize anthology.

Writing

Halliday's poetry is characterized by close observation of daily events, out-of-the-ordinary metaphors, unsentimental reminiscence, colloquial diction, references to popular culture, and uncommon humor. Poet David Graham has described Halliday as one of the "ablest practitioners" of the "ultra-talk poem," a term said to have been coined by Halliday himself to describe the work of a group of contemporary American poets, including David Kirby, Denise Duhamel, David Clewell, Albert Goldbarth, and Barbara Hamby, who frequently write in a wry, exuberant, garrulous, accessible style. Halliday has acknowledged the influences of New York School poets Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch on some of his poems.

Recognition

His honors include a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2001 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Billy Collins included 5 of Halliday's poems in his 2003 anthology, Poetry 180.

Publications

Poetry

• Little Star: Poems. New York: Morrow, 1987.
• Tasker Street. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
• Selfwolf. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
• Jab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
• Keep This Forever: Poems. Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2008.
• Thresherphobe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Non-fiction

• Against Our Vanishing: Winter conversations on the theory and practice of poetry (with Allen Grossman). Boston: Rowan Tree Press, 1981.
• Stevens and the Interpersonal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• The Sighted Singer: Two works on poetry for readers and writers (with Allen Grossman). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Legs by Mark Halliday Animation

Audio / video

• Mark Halliday (DVD). University of Idaho, Department of English, 2007.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• Mark Halliday at Poetry 180: "Dorie off to Atlanta," "Key to the Highway," "My Moral Life," "Legs," "Key to the Highway"
• Mark Halliday b. 1949 at the Poetry Foundation

Audio / video

• Audio: "Frankfort Laundromat" (Slate text and recording of Halliday poem)
• Audio: "The Fedge" (Slate Text and recording of Halliday poem)
• Audio: Mark Halliday reads his poems (Recordings of seven works read by Halliday, with photograph)
• Mark Halliday at YouTube

Books

• Mark Halliday at Amazon.com

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