Todd Boss
About
About his early life and family,
Todd says:
PUBLICATIONS
Alaska Quarterly Review
Alimentum
Asheville Poetry Review
Best American Poetry 2010
Commonweal
Dislocate
Drummer
Dunes Review
Ecotone
Georgia Review
Great River Review
Hawk & Whippoorwill
Idaho Review
Indiana Review
Knockout
Missouri Review
New England Review
The New Yorker
The Normal School
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poets & Writers
Prairie Schooner
Redivider
Subtropics
The Sun
Sycamore Review
TriQuarterly
Verse Wisconsin
Virginia Quarterly Review
Water~Stone Review
Willow Springs
Zone 3
BOOKS
Yellowrocket (W. W. Norton & Co., 2008)
On Marriage (Red Dragonfly Press, 2008)
GRANTS / RESIDENCIES
Minnesota State Arts Board
Ragdale Foundation
CONFERENCE FACULTY
MFA FACULTY
Todd says:
“My pedigree is German-Norwegian. I was bred for practicality, hard work, and a healthy skepticism.”
Basics
Todd Boss’s debut poetry collection, Yellowrocket (Norton, 2008) enjoyed widespread critical and popular acclaim. It was selected as the 2009 Midwest Booksellers Honor Book for Poetry. Todd’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Virginia Quarterly Review, which awarded him the Emily Clark Balch Prize in 2009. His work has been syndicated on NPR and in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column. His MFA is from the University of Alaska-Anchorage.
At home I learned to mend fence, chop wood, and make hay. At family gatherings I listened to fierce debates about the tax code, the energy crisis, and societal problems. My people have a great sense of humor, too, so we were never far from a good laugh.
RECENT TIMELINE
In 2006, Tony Hoagland selects Todd’s poem “Things, Like Dogs” as a finalist for the Sycamore Review Wabash Prize.
In 2007, Poetry lists Todd’s poem, “The Hush of the Very Good” in a selection of the editors’ “24 favorite love poems” published since Poetry’s founding in 1912.
In 2008, Todd’s poem “One Can Miss Mountains” appears in The New Yorker, two of Todd’s poems win three top prizes in Missouri Review’s first annual audio competition, and Todd is a four-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Virginia Quarterly Review awards Todd their Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry, and lists Yellowrocket as one of the “year’s 10 best poetry books.”
In 2009, Yellowrocket is selected as the Midwest Bookseller’s Honor Book and Todd’s poems are syndicated in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and on National Public Radio. Todd does conference faculty stints in Alaska and Florida, and unveils an ambitious poetry film project at motionpoems.com.
In 2010, Yellowrocket is released in paperback in the US, UK, Ireland, India, Africa, and the Middle East. Todd joins the faculty of the low-residency Stonecoast MFA program.
Details
Born in 1968, Todd Boss grew up just across the poverty line on an 80-acre cattle farm near Fall Creek, Wisconsin, the son of working-class parents. His father was a carpenter; his mother a bookkeeper. He met his wife at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. With her encouragement, Todd got his MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska–Anchorage.
Todd’s poetry is musical, idea-driven, and accessible to the average reader. He explores the noxious nature of persistent love, the fickle character of a creator God, the artistry of nature’s disorder, and the great non-denominational church of the past.
Todd is the poet laureate of Nina’s Cafe in St. Paul, where he curates the “Verse and Converse” reading series in association with Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books. He is the founding editor of Flurry, an online journal of wintry poetry from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. He is the co-founder of motionpoems.com, a new poetry film project that turns poems into animated shorts.
Contact
By e-mail: toddbosspoet(at)mac(dot)com.
Literary Representation
Nancy Stauffer Cahoon, Nancy Stauffer Associates, (203) 202-2500