D. Nurkse

Dennis Nurkse was born on December 13, 1949, in New Jersey, the son of Estonian economist Ragnar Nurkse. He received his BA from Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Nurkse is the author of nearly a dozen poetry collections, including, most recently, Love in the Last Days: After Tristan and Iseult (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017) and A Night in Brooklyn (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).

Of Nurkse’s writing, poet Philip Levine writes: 

He possesses the ability to employ the language of our American streets, shops, bars, factories, and any place else and construct truly lyrical poems, sometimes of love, sometimes of anger.

Nurkse’s honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Whiting Foundation, as well as fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Nurske was appointed Brooklyn poet laureate in 1996 and served in the position until 2001. He has taught poetry at Brooklyn College, The New School, Rikers Island Correctional Facility, Rutgers University, and University of Southern Maine. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College.