I’m Kent Shaw. I was born in St. Louis. I lived in Oklahoma. And now I’m in Rhode Island. I have worked as a barista, a copy writer, a data analyst (sort of), a documentation specialist, and as a nuke electrician in the United States Navy. I earned my MFA from Washington University and my PhD from University of Houston. For five years, I taught poetry at West Virginia State University. Then, in 2016, I moved with my family to New England, where I teach poetry as writing process and literature at Wheaton College in MA. I have received a fellowship from MacDowell, which supported me writing my second book. My two books of poems are: Too Numerous (University of Massachusetts Press, 2019), winner of the Juniper Prize, and Calenture (University of Tampa Press, 2008).
A selection of previously published poems:
- “And a creature can only understand so much when it’s a creature that keeps talking”, “The paths into the center of any given location are often shaped like the human mind thinking” Oversound, forthcoming
- “Privacy is an inside, or like always is inside each one of us”, “How many people eventually fit into people’s lives?”, “Ministering CPR to an already breathing animal” at Action, Spectacle.
- “How many men does it take to perfect the male odor” at New American Writing.
- “Dear Mark Doty, are you the man I met 10 years ago?” and “Definitions of lucky are too numerous” at Miracle Monocle.
- “My doctor prescribed me glass rods for replacing my ribs” at DIAGRAM.
- “Always was being so always around us that we had to put always on the insides of us” at jubilat.
- “My fear is that someone would invent a tool to untether me” at Cincinnati Review (republished at Academy of American Poets).
- “What we did about a world that kept getting very loud” at Vinyl Poetry.
- “People don’t understand what an emotion normally looks like” at TYPO.
- “My city is not called ladders” at Memorious.
- “Actually, this poem belongs to my wife” at Denver Quarterly.
- “There were bricks put at brick angles” at Bennington Review.
A selection of book reviews:
- A review of Basie Allen’s Palm-Lined with Potience at Colorado Review.
- A review of Yanyi’s the year of blue water at Constant Critic.
- A review of Monica McClure’s Tender Data at Kenyon Review Online.
- A review of Robert Fernandez’s scarecrow at Colorado Review.
- A review of Donna Stonecipher’s Model Cities at Fanzine.
- A review of Lisa Ciccarello’s At Night at The Rumpus.
And, finally, a couple personal essays:
- “The Carrier” at Seneca Review.
- “How to fall in love for real” at Brevity.