Dennis Nurkse is my mentor and teacher in poetry (and life). His skillful insight during my MFA program brought to life my poetry collection Bending the Arch. I’m grateful to see this recent interview with him from Hanging Loose Press and for his shout out.–Rose Berger

D. Nurkse is the author of twelve collections of poetry, most recently A Country of Strangers (2022) from Alfred Knopf. Hanging Loose published Nurkse’s first collection of poems, Shadow Wars, in 1988. He’s the recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, the Whiting Writers Award, and prizes from The Poetry Foundation and the Tannen Foundation. He served as poet laureate of Brooklyn from 1996 to 2001. His work has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Estonian, and other languages. Nurkse has also written on human rights and was elected to the board of Amnesty International-USA for a 2007-2010 term. Nurkse has taught poetry at Rikers Island Correctional Facility and in inner-city literacy programs, as well as at MFA programs at Rutgers, Brooklyn College, and Stonecoast. For the Brooklyn Public Library, he edited This Beautiful Name Is Mine, poems by inner-city children. He’s currently a long-term member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife the writer Beth Bosworth, and the wild puppy Zephyr.

Read the whole interview.

Excerpt:

HLP: Are you thinking of any young poets in particular? How do you think they are managing to keep their heads above water despite all of this turmoil?

DN: I think of poets I worked with—not necessarily young, but younger than me–dg nanouk okpik, Rose Berger, Quincy Scott Jones. Quincy wrote about police violence and, having made a statement, established connections, had to stand back and watch the killings continue. dg is Inuit and has to watch the climate collapse ten times faster in the North where her family is from. Rose’s book-so few reviews. I think they find ways to take a longer view. They inspire me. If I were connected to America just by the twenty-four hour news cycle, I wouldn’t last a minute. []