Bobbie Louise Hawkins
Encyclopedia
Life
She was raised in west TexasWest Texas
West Texas is a vernacular term applied to a region in the southwestern quadrant of the United States that primarily encompasses the arid and semi-arid lands in the western portion of the state of Texas....
, studied art in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, taught in missionary schools in British Honduras
British Honduras
British Honduras was a British colony that is now the independent nation of Belize.First colonised by Spaniards in the 17th century, the territory on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, became a British crown colony from 1862 until 1964, when it became self-governing. Belize became...
, attended Sophia University
Sophia University
There are several rankings below related to Sophia University.-General Rankings:The university was ranked 61st in 2010 in the ranking Truly Strong Universities by Toyo Keizai...
.
Her first one-woman show of paintings and collages was at the Gotham Book Mart
Gotham Book Mart
The Gotham Book Mart, in operation from 1920 to 2007, was a famous midtown Manhattan bookstore and cultural landmark. The business was located first in a small basement space on West 45th Street near the Theater District, it then moved to 51 West 47th Street, then spent many years at 41 West 47th...
in 1974.
In 1979 she was one of 100 poets from eleven countries attending the "One World Poetry" festival in Amsterdam.
She was married to Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
.
Bobbie Louise Hawkins wrote a one-hour play for PBS called "Talk" in 1980.
She has two CD’s, Live at the Great American Music Hall and Jaded Love.
In 2001, Life As We Know It, a one-woman show, was performed in Boulder and New York City.
She taught fiction writing workshops and courses in literary studies at Naropa University
Naropa University
Naropa University is a private American liberal arts university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.Naropa describes itself as...
until her retirement in 2010. She continues to offer readings and teach for Naropa's Summer Writing Program.
Works
- "life in Bolinas: Bobbie Louise Hawkins, laborin'", raticle
- "Panna: 1. Cyril in Texas", Big Bridge #11
- "In the Colony", Ploughshares, Spring 1974
- "I Owe You One", Ploughshares, Spring 1974
- "Bathroom/Animal/Castration Story ", Ploughshares, Spring 1974
- Back to Texas (Bearhug) 1977
- Own Your Body, Black Sparrow Press, 1973
Interview
Reviews
Bobbie Louise Hawkins' Almost Everything is just that. It leaves out her scattered poems and any direct reference to her two unhappy marriages and the children they produced. What remains, two collections of short prose pieces and nine new stories, run a mere 172 pages -- the condensed version of a life punctuated, as Tillie Olsen might put it, by "silences." So when Hawkins speaks, it's that much more pungent.