Brenda Coultas
Encyclopedia
Life
She was raised in Indiana, often working odd jobs such as welding.She graduated from 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...
, studying with Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....
and Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
. Coultas also taught 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...
.
She moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1994. With Eleni Sikelianos
Eleni Sikelianos
-Life:She was raised in California. She graduated from the Naropa Institute with an M.F.A.She taught at Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York City and teaches Literature and Bard College's Clemente Program. She co-ran the Wednesday Night Readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in St....
, she worked at the Poetry Project in NYC, edited the Poetry Project Newsletter
In 2003, she was a visiting poet at Long Island University
Long Island University
Long Island University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution of higher education in the U.S. state of New York.-History:...
. She lives in the Bowery
Bowery
Bowery may refer to:Streets:* The Bowery, a thoroughfare in Manhattan, New York City* Bowery Street is a street on Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.In popular culture:* Bowery Amphitheatre, a building on the Bowery in New York City...
.
Her work has also been published Brooklyn Rail, Trickhouse, the Denver Review, and in two collections: An Anthology of New (American) Poets (Talisman 1996), and conjunctions 35 "American Poetry: States of the Art" (Fall 2000).
Awards
- 2004 Norma Farber First Book AwardNorma Farber First Book AwardThe Norma Farber First Book Award is given by the Poetry Society of America "for a first book of original poetry written by an American and published in either a hard or soft cover in a standard edition during the calendar year"....
, A Handmade Museum - Greenwald grant from the Academy of American Poets
- 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)
- Lower Manhattan Cultural Council artist-in-residence.
Reviews
Brenda Coultas’ collection of formally innovative fictions, Early Films, seems like McCain and DeanovichConnie DeanovichConnie Deanovich is an American poet.She lived in Chicago. She now lives in Madison, Wisconsin.Her work appeared in Bomb, Grand Street, New American Writing, Parnassus, See, Sulfur.-Works:***-External links:*...
to be influenced by the casually flat tone of New York School poetry, but also like them in wanting to use that tradition for new ends. Coultas also shares with Deanovich a concern for ordinary middle American folks. But where Deanovich treats her characters with generous irony, Early Films is gloriously vicious. This is not a book for the faint hearted. Indeed its concerns with pathology, murder, and all sorts of country bumpkin (and urban bumpkin) grotesquerie reminds me most, perversely, of the cheap thrills of a horror genre writer like Joe Lansdale.
More than an investigative poetics, then, Coultas has created a poetry of archaeology. The investigative technique uncovers a vast landscape of soil, artifacts and spirits. The authenticity of the tales, of the histories, seems irrelevant in this light. The important point is that Coultas is working, that she is digging, and, in continuing to dig, carrying her poetry into unique and fresh territory.