CAConrad

Born on January 1, 1966, in Topeka, CAConrad is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021); While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017); ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books, 2014); Philip Seymour Hoffman (were you high when you said this?) (Worms Press, 2014); A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics (Wave Books, 2012); and The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009), the recipient of the Gil Ott Book Award. They also authored a book of nonfiction essays, Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009).

CAConrad is known for their development of (Soma)tics, a poetics, as they describe, “which investigates that seemingly infinite space between body and spirit by using nearly any possible THING around or of the body to channel the body out and/or in toward spirit with deliberate and sustained concentration.”

About their work, poet Eileen Myles writes, “[CAConrad] always argues (from the inside of their poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. Their kind of queerness strikes me as non-polarizing, not intentionally but because of the fullness of their exposition, a kind of gigantism that seems to me to be most deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence.”

CAConrad’s honors include fellowships from the Banff Art Center, the Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Poetry Foundation, and Ucross Foundation. CAConrad conducts lectures and workshops across the country on (Soma)tics and Ecopoetics. 

They teach at Columbia University and UMass Amherst, and live in Greenfield, Massachusetts.