Timothy Donnelly

1969 –

Born in 1969 in Providence, Rhode Island, Timothy Donnelly holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, and an MFA from Columbia University.

Donnelly is the author of four collections of poetry: Chariot (Wave Books, 2023); The Problem of the Many (Wave Books, 2019); The Cloud Corporation (Wave Books, 2011); and Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove Press, 2003). His work has also been translated into German and appears in the poetry anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006), edited by Michael Dumanis and Cate MarvinJoyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, and Poet (Autumn House Press, 2006); Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), edited by Helen Vendler.

Donnelly’s work has been widely praised. Jorie Graham has remarked that his poetry is “musically brilliant and articulate,” and Richard Howard found Donnelly’s first collection, “as vigorous, as fresh, and as authoritative” as the work of John Ashbery.

Donnelly is a recipient of Columbia University’s Distinguished Faculty and Faculty Mentoring Awards, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Connors Prize, as well as fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the New York State Writers Institute, and the T. S. Eliot Foundation. 

Donnelly has served as the poetry editor at the Boston Review. He is also a professor in the writing program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.