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
SAD FRIENDS, DROWNED LOVERS, STAPLED SONGS
"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
"Anyone who has read Chard deNiord's interviews as they first appeared in American Poetry Review and AGNI knows that he has conducted the most interesting and perceptive conversations with these seven major contemporary poets to appear in print. Added to them in this collection are three wise and readable essays on James Wright, Philip Levine and Elizabeth Bishop/Robert Lowell. It's a must read for anyone with even a passing interest in recent American literature."
—Ed Ochester
"I think it's Chard deNiord's intelligence and empathy as a questioner which help his subjects--some of our best-known and most-respected senior poets--seem to make discoveries about themselves before our eyes. This collection of interviews about what it is to live and think as a poet, along with lucid critical essays, make for a very useful and also very lovely book."
—Daisy Fried