Jeff Poniewaz & Antler
Jeff Poniewaz received a B.A. and M.A. in English from UW-Milwaukee, where since 1989 he’s taught “Literature of Ecological Vision,” a course he devised. His eco-activism spans from local urban greenspace struggles to the global rainforest crisis. Since his first published poems appeared in Kaleidoscope and Beloit Poetry Journal in 1968, his poems have also appeared in Earth First!, Greenpeace Chronicles, Los Angeles Times, Blake Times, Exquisite Corpse, Viet Nam Generation, New York Quarterly and numerous other periodicals. His collection of eco-writings spanning 1975-82, Dolphin Leaping in the Milky Way (Inland Ocean Books, 1986) was praised by Allen Ginsberg for its “impassioned prescient ecological Whitmanesque/Thoreauvian verve and wit.”
A collection of his subsequent eco writings is forthcoming, as well as a volume of selected poems on miscellaneous subjects spanning from 1965 to the present. His poems have appeared in a many anthologies, including Earth Prayers (1991), Prayers at 3 A.M. (1995) and Prayers for a Thousand Years—Blessings and Expressions of Hope for the New Millennium (1999), all three published by HarperSanFrancisco, and The Soul Unearthed—Celebrating Wildness and Personal Renewal through Nature (Tarcher, 1996). Lawrence Ferlinghetti called Jeff’s epic “September 11, 2001” the “best poem I’ve seen on 9/11.” Extensive excerpts from it were published in September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (William Heyen, ed.), An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind—Poets on 9/11 (Allen Cohen, ed.), and in Van Gogh’s Ear out of Paris. He has taught and performed poetry at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, the Kerouac Poetics School in Boulder and at Antioch College in Ohio. He won a 1987 “Discovery Award” from PEN, the international writers’ organization. In addition to the Eco Lit course he has taught since 1989, since 1999 he has taught a course on Whitman and poets inspired by Whitman. His last name is pronounced POE-nYEAH-vAHsh and is Polish for “because.”