Chard deNiord
Poet Laureate of Vermont (2015-2019)
Chard deNiord is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently, This Ecstasy (forthcoming from Slant, 2026), Westminster West (Tupelo Press, 2025), One As Other (Green Writers Press, 2024), and In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
He is also the author of three books of interviews with eminent American poets: Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs (Marick Press, 2011), I Would Lie To You If I Could (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), and Learning To Be Everyone And No One (forthcoming from The University of Alabama Press, 2026).
He is the former Poet Laureate of Vermont (2015-2019), Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Providence College, co-founder with Gerald Stern and Jacqueline Gens of The New England College MFA Program In Poetry, and cofounder of The Spirit And The Letter Writing Workshop in Patzcuaro, Mexico, with Jacqueline Gens and Thomas Lux.
He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, Liz.
Recent Books and more
Books
“Interstate seamlessly connects the state of knowing, in a worldly sense, to that knowing that is deeply felt yet unbodied. The precise attention to the ordinary things of the world, and in particular to the natural world, gives way to the wisdom of the spirit undergirding these searching poems. Reading them, I felt the delights of language in each new revelation: ‘Words were all; / they came to me like birds to a tree.'" -Natasha Trethewey
"With philosophers and beasts for his confidants, deNiord accesses both eros and cosmos—the far reaches of love and eternity—with a companionable, searing exactness. These are quiet, bottomless poems of true consequence."
-Robin Behn
"Here is a poet with a truly extraordinary verbal imagination. His poems begin in the commonplace and rise-or soar, leap, swell-to the climactic surreal in a few lines. This is aptitude beyond technique, unassailable by the workshopping greenhorns. It is indeed a kind of ecstasy for every and any reader. I recommend Chard deNiord's new book as enthusiastically as I can.” -Haydun Carruth
"This is a work of spiritual intelligence, rueful, loving, ecstatic: an everyman sings here of God, lover, nature, all one and shapeshifting, and sings at times with the simple beauty of the best southwestern country music." -Jean Valentine
"Asleep in the Fire is a brilliant first collection of poems. The language is everywhere fresh and bright, the words themselves like pebbles in a clear brook. The poet comes wonderfully to light with a voice with deep spiritual resonance. Chard deNiord is a splendid new presence on the poetry scene." -Jay Parini
"Chard deNiord is master of the immersed conversation. Informed, curious, knowing when to contend and when to unbend, he meets each of his poets on the high ground of their art, and seduces from them their most closely-held wisdom. Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs is at once a schooling and a delight." -Sven Birkerts
"It's a delight to read and experience."
-John Ashbery