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).
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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).
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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
POEMS
The Gift
From Interstate, University of Pittsburgh Press
In memory of Ruth Stone (June 8th, 1915—November 19th, 2011)
“All I did was write them down
wherever I was at the time, hanging
laundry, baking bread, driving to Illinois...
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Grouse Call
From Interstate, University of Pittsburgh Press
Do si do and say hello
to drummin’ bird. Slow
it down then pick it up...
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To Hear and Hear
From Night Mowing, University of Pittsburgh Press
The hermit thrush is set for six
to sing her song, as if it were
the end of the world and she was stirred...
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This Ecstacy
From The Double Truth, University of Pittsburgh Press
It’s not paradise I’m looking for
but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.
Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness
beneath the overstory before I started
listening to the news...
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Pasternak
From Best American Poetry
"What century have we got out there, my dears?"
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-Boris Pasternak
This was the life, to live in Russia
at the end of Russia and write about its history...
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What the Animals Teach Us
From The Pushcart Prize
that love is dependent on memory,
that life is eternal and therefore criminal,
that thought is an invisible veil that covers our eyes...
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