Budbill, David 1940–

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Budbill, David 1940–

PERSONAL: Born June 13, 1940, in Cleveland, OH; father a streetcar driver; married Lois Eby (an artist); children: Gene, one daughter. Education: Attended Muskingum College and Columbia University; Union Theological Seminary, M.Div. Hobbies and other interests: Jazz and African-American classical music.

ADDRESSES: Home—Wolcott, VT. Agent—Susan Schulman: A Literary Agency, 454 W. 44th St., New York, NY 10036. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Has worked variously as short order cook, gardener, grounds keeper, street gang worker, manager of a coffee house, research assistant, carpenter's apprentice, forester, day laborer, and English teacher. Former poet in residence, Jamestown Community College, Jamestown, NY; and Niagara-Erie Writers, Buffalo, NY; former playwright in residence at McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ; Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN; American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, CA; Texas Wesleyan University, Fort Worth, TX; American Inside Theatre, Genesee Depot, WI; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; and Arena Stage, Washington, DC. Former commentator for All Things Considered, broadcast on National Public Radio. Guest lecturer, University of Vermont, 1995.

AWARDS, HONORS: Kirkus Choice Books, 1974, for Christmas Tree Farm, and c. 1976, for Snowshoe Trek to Otter Farm; Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award for fiction, 1978; Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, 1981; playwriting fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1991; Judevine: The Complete Poems was selected as one of the best books of poems of 1991 by Booklist; Walter Cerf Award, Vermont Arts Council, 2002, for lifetime achievement in the arts.

WRITINGS:

Mannequins' Demise (play), Baker's Plays (Boston, MA), 1964.

Knucklehead Rides Again (play), first performed in NY and NJ, 1966, published in Religious Theatre Magazine, 1967.

Barking Dog (poems), Barking Dog Press, 1968.

Christmas Tree Farm (picture book), illustrated by Donald Carrick, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1974.

Snowshoe Trek to Otter River (stories), Dial Press (New York, NY), 1976, reprinted, Onion River Press (Underhill, VT), 2005.

The Chain Saw Dance (poems), Crow's Mark Press, 1977.

The Bones on Black Spruce Mountain (novel), Dial Press (New York, NY), 1978, reprinted, Onion River Press (Underhill, VT), 2004.

From Down to the Village (poems), illustrated by wife, Lois Eby, introduction by John Haines, Ark (New York, NY), 1981.

Pulp Cutters' Nativity: A Christmas Poem in Two Acts, Being a Contemporary Adaptation of the Medieval English Miracle Play, "The Second Shepherds' Play," Countryman Press (Woodstock, VT), 1981.

Judevine (play), first performed in Princeton, NJ, at McCarter Theatre, 1984, performed in San Francisco, CA, at the American Conservatory Theatre, 1990.

Why I Came to Judevine (poems), illustrated by Lois Eby, White Pine Press (Fredonia, NY), 1987.

Judevine: The Complete Poems, Chelsea Green Publications (Post Mills, VT), 1991, revised and expanded edition, 1999.

Thingy World! (play), first produced in Clarksville, TN, at Austin Peay State University, November, 1991.

Little Acts of Kindness (play), first performed in Montpelier, VT, at Lost Nation Theatre, 1993.

(Editor) Danvis Tales: Selected Stories, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 1995.

Two for Christmas (play), first performed in White River Junction, Montpelier, and Burlington, VT, 1996.

Judevine: The Play in Four Acts, first produced in Bennington, VT, at Old Castle Theatre, 1996.

Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 1999.

(Author of libretto) A Fleeting Animal: An Opera from Judevine (first performed in VT, October, 2000), music by Erik Nielsen, Middle Branch Music, 2001.

While We've Still Got Feet: New Poems, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2005.

Also author of performance piece "A Love Supreme: A Found Poem for Black Music"; author of introduction to books, including Dr. Norton's Wife and The Brewers' Big Horses, both by Mildred Walker, both Bison Books, 1996. Contributor to anthologies, including Wetting Our Lines Together, edited by Allen Hoey, Tamarack Editions, 1982; An Ear to the Ground: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by Marie Harris and Kathleen Aguero, University of Georgia Press, 1989; The Best American Poetry of 1989, edited by Donald Hall, Scribner, 1989; Working Classics, edited by Peter Oresick and Nicholas Coles, University of Illinois Press, 1990; The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Mead, HarperCollins, 1992; New American Plays, Volume 2 (includes Judevine: The Play in Two Acts), Heinemann, 1992; For a Living: The Poetry of Work, edited by Nicholas Coles and Peter Oresick, University of Illinois Press, 1995; Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor, Viking Press, 2002.

Also contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, New Virginia Review, Regional Review, Graffiti Rag, Cedar Hill Review, Maine Times, Seneca Review, Harvard Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Hollins Critic, Vermont Life, Poetry Now, Beloit Poetry Journal, Greensboro Review, Seeds of Change, Organic Gardening, Ohio Review, Greenfield Review, and New Letters. Editor in chief, The Judevine Mountain Emailite: A Cyberzine: An Online and Ongoing Journal of Politics and Opinion, http://www.davidbudbill.com/jme.html.

SIDELIGHTS: David Budbill has made a name for himself in his adopted home state of Vermont as an author of poetry, plays, and other fiction, especially those centered in the fictional town of Judevine. Though not a native of Vermont, the author told American Theater contributor Gretchen Griffin that when he moved there in the 1970s "I was immediately drawn into writing a saga about [the local people.] It began in verse, and it kept growing and growing." These works became the Judevine cycle and include the poetry collections The Chain Saw Dance, From Down to the Village, Why I Came to Judevine, and Judevine: The Complete Poems, the verse drama Pulp Cutters' Nativity: A Christmas Poem in Two Acts, Being a Contemporary Adaptation of the Medieval English Miracle Play, "The Second Shepherds' Play," the short story collection Snowshoe Trek to Otter River, the novel Bones on Black Spruce Mountain, and the play Judevine, which has gone through several revisions, such as the 1996 version Judevine: The Play in Four Acts.

Together, the works comprise a kind of paean to the average working person. About these works, Howard Nelson wrote in the Hollins Critic that Budbill combines "sociology and opinion … with lyricism and universal emotion." "One can call Budbill," the critic continued, "a dramatic narrative poet, a lyrical storyteller or playwright, or a poetic social critic: he is all of these." The author's characters are ordinary people—sometimes sympathetic, sometimes disagreeable—facing down the challenges of life to greater or lesser degrees of success. While the natural landscape is also a subject of his Vermont tales, especially in his poetry, Nelson noted that Budbill is not a nature poet: "Instead, he writes about the smaller, grubbier, torn and frayed, austere, vivid, pathetic, heroic ecologies that go on down at the mountains' feet: his subjects are human beings, human nature." "It is easy to pigeonhole Budbill as a regionalist or local colorist," concluded Nelson, "but those tags neither sum him up nor do him justice. The Judevine cycle is an ambitious, pungent, tough, funny, pained, kindly, well-wrought body of work."