Ailish Hopper
American poet, writer and teacher
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Ailish Hopper is an American poet, writer and teacher.
Bennington College (M.F.A.)
Ailish Hopper | |
|---|---|
| Born | Washington, District of Columbia |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (A.B.) Bennington College (M.F.A.) |
| Employer | Goucher College |
| Website | http://www.ailishhopper.net/ |
Biography
Hopper released a chapbook titled Bird in the Head in 2005, and has since published a poetry collection called Dark~Sky Society (2014), which explores racial tensions.[1] In an interview with WYPR, she has noted her interest in race relations as being a consequence of her coming of age in DC and of her Irish heritage.[2][3] Hopper's poetry has also been included in Agni, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Harvard Review Online, Tidal Basin Review, among others.[4][5] In addition to page poetry, she has performed with the band Heroes are Gang Leaders, along with poets Thomas Sayers Ellis and Randall Horton, and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis.[6][7] Hopper has also written essays about race relations, including one in Boston Review, "Can a Poem Listen? Variations on Being-white."[8]
Hopper graduated with an A.B. in religion and a certificate in African American studies from Princeton University in 1993 after completing a senior thesis under the supervision of Cornel West.[9] She later received an M.F.A. in creative writing and literature from Bennington College. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony,[10] the Vermont Studio, and Yaddo.[11] Until 2025 she was an associate professor in Goucher College's peace studies department.[12]
Published works
- "Did it Ever Occur to You that Maybe You're Falling in Love" Poetry magazine, January 2016[13]
- "The Good Caucasian" Harvard Review Online, August 2014[14]
- "Dream, Technidifficult" Academy of American Poets[15]
- Dark~Sky Society (New Issues, 2014)
- Bird in the Head (Center for Book Arts, 2005)
In anthology
- Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press, 2018)
Reviews
- Jane Hirshfield: "Hopper attends to an examination of her own place in this American landscape of intimate and indelible participation...and offers to say what the less courageous or less moved leave unsaid."[16]
- Douglas Kearney: "Hopper's lines halt, knot, interdigitate, and stutter, but they never flinch. She leaves that to the reader. What she doesn't offer us are easy epiphanies, a bid for being a good caucasian, or post-race snake oil. This is difficult work for a time when 'any touch/will bruise'. Dark~Sky Society insists we reach and be reached anyway."[17]
- Melanie Henderson: "Ailish Hopper is a poet's poet, being brave and fearless in style and content."[18]