A literary life
‘Versatile’ poet writes, edits, teaches and blogs

BY DAN PETTY, ’09

University of Richmond professor, poet, critic and magazine editor Brian Henry feels writing poems is more about perspiration than inspiration.

“Inspiration may be necessary, but it’s never sufficient to write something,” says Henry, an associate professor of English who left the University of Georgia last year to teach and help build a creative writing program at Richmond. “An artist also needs to work hard to realize his or her vision. If someone sits around waiting for inspiration to strike, he or she can be sitting around for an awfully long time.”

Henry’s own contributions and diligent work in poetry were recognized with the $10,000 Carole Weinstein Poetry prize given at the 9th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards last fall.

“The excellence of Brian’s personal achievement in poetry, his generous encouragement of fellow poets, and the pleasure and fellowship his work has brought to all who share his devotion to the art made him deserving of this award,” said Don Selby, one of three members of the prize-selection board. 

The prize, also awarded to George Garrett, recently retired from the University of Virginia after a 40-year teaching career, annually honors an accomplished poet with strong connections to central Virginia. Recipients are selected for a range of achievement in the field of poetry and significant recent contribution to the art of poetry, according to the prize’s Web site, weinsteinpoetryprize.com.

“I’ve always thought about writing and poetry not just as a poet, but as an editor and critic, too,” says Henry, 34. “My models early on were people who published often and did a lot of other things.”

Carole Weinstein, W’75, G’77, and H’04, for whom the prize is named, created the award in 2005 to raise visibility of poetry in Virginia because she saw that few awards exist and most are financially small.

“After awarding George Garrett for his decades of mentoring, teaching and achieving wide fame as a writer of poetry, fiction and criticism,” said Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, another board member and past winner of the Weinstein Prize, “it felt good to turn to a poet in his early thirties who was on his way to fulfill that same promise.”

Asked how he felt about winning the prize, Henry smiled and said: “It was a pleasant surprise.”  

Henry gravitated toward poetry and writing in his early twenties, first writing poetry reviews for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and in 1995 becoming co-editor of Verse magazine, which publishes poems, poetry criticism and poet interviews.

“We try to be unpredictable,” says Henry about Verse, which has readers throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. “We try to promote emerging writers—not just famous ones—and we love to discover writers and poets. But our main criterion is that the works use language in a compelling or surprising way.”

In 2004, Henry launched a companion Verse blog (versemag.blogspot.com), where he and others, including some University students, frequently post reviews of recently published poetry. The site receives about 200 visits per day, says Henry.

“I wanted something that was more open,” says Henry. “People are free to make comments, which you can do by scribbling on your copy of the magazine, but they’re not going to be out there. The blog allows for dialogue.”

The blog also features reviews of magazines and limited-edition, pocket-sized chapbooks, which often sell out by the time print reviews are written.

Henry’s poetry criticism has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement and The Kenyon Review, among others, while his poems have been published in The New Republic, American Poetry Review, The Paris Review and more than 100 other magazines. 

Henry has published four books of poetry: Astronaut, American Incident, Graft and Quarantine—the last written in three days but nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. A fifth, The Stripping Point, is being published this month. In contrast to Quarantine, it took 10 years to finish.

His poems focus on a variety of themes. American Incident provides commentary on American culture, while Quarantine, which won the 2003 Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, focuses on a man dying of bubonic plague in 17th-century London. 

“I don’t choose themes,” he says, “I think your themes and obsessions choose you.”

He has recently investigated violence’s relationship to the mind, body and landscapes, as well as the relationship between surveillance and domesticity.

“Outright surveillance is like being in an airport,” he says, “But if you have kids and you’re in a family, you’re constantly under surveillance. It’s benign surveillance, but you can’t go to the bathroom without your 2-year-old coming in after you.”

Henry visited Australia for a year as a Fulbright scholar to examine its culture and explore its poetry. He also has traveled to Russia (for the Moscow Poetry Festival), Italy and Slovenia. His poems have been translated into Russian, Croatian and Slovenian.

As immersed as Henry is in reading and reviewing poetry, he still finds writing his own the most gratifying.

“I can’t imagine living without writing poems,” he says.  “I could probably live without writing a review, because you run out of things to say after a while. But I love reading other peoples’ work before it’s in books. I’ve always gotten a rush from that.”

Henry is working on a one-act play and writing a novel and novella in verse in an effort to unite narrative and poetry.

“For a poet as young as Brian is, his work has demonstrated striking range and depth of accomplishment,” says Selby, the board member and co-editor of Poetry Daily, an online anthology of contemporary poetry. “His poetry’s ambition, deep seriousness, formal inventiveness and experimental spirit are striking.”

Henry says he does not write to please, believing that part of writing’s purpose is to disturb and unsettle people.

“I think what a lot of poets try to do is honor language by doing something with it,” Henry says. “My ultimate goal is to  reinvigorate language through poetry.”

POEM

As Difficult as Rain,

   the snow on the glass as it melts.

   Another border to ignore by crossing.

   But why not stop
               and turn to squint
   at the streaks as they dry to burden,
   wreck the window, make it less.

   Why not focus on the failure of glass
   to guide the eye through,
   watch the snow harden

   and not fall.

—        Brian Henry