Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski was born on August 3, 1937, in Whittier, California. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied with Thom Gunn, Josephine Miles, and Tom Parkinson.

Wakowski has published more than forty collections of poems, including Lady of Light (Anginga Press, 2018) as well as the four books that constitute her series “The Archaeology of Movies and Books”: Argonaut Rose (1998), The Emerald City of Las Vegas (1995), Jason the Sailor (1993), and Medea the Sorceress (1991), all published by Black Sparrow Press; Emerald Ice: Selected Poems, 1962–1987 (Black Sparrow Press, 1988), which won the William Carlos Williams Award; and The Collected Greed, Parts 1–13 (Black Sparrow Press, 1984). 

Wakowski has also published four books of essays: Toward a New Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 1979); Variations on a Theme (Black Sparrow Press, 1976); Creating a Personal Mythology (Black Sparrow Press, 1975); and Form Is an Extension of Content (Black Sparrow Press, 1972).

Wakowski’s honors include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Michigan Arts Foundation Award, and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Michigan Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Wakoski lives in East Lansing, Michigan, where, since 1975, she taught at Michigan State University as a University Distinguished Professor until her retirement.