Mehigan, Joshua 1969–

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Mehigan, Joshua 1969–

PERSONAL: Born 1969, in Johnstown, NY. Education: Purchase College, B.A., 1991; Sarah Lawrence College, M.F.A., 1994.

ADDRESSES: Home—151 14th St., Apt. 1, Brooklyn, NY 11215. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Editor, educator, and poet. Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, teaching assistant, 1994; Bronx Community College, Bronx, NY, adjunct lecturer in the English Department, 2003; University of Southern Maine, Portland, visiting writer, 2006; Poets & Writers Online, editor; Society of Underground Poets (syndicated radio program), poetry book reviewer. Worked previously as jobs, including teaching English at a Manhattan Beach yeshiva, delivering food, serving as managing editor of Fire Island News, and working in marketing at Cambridge University Press. Tennessee Williams Scholar, Sewanee Writers' Conference, 2000, and scholar, West Chester University Poetry Conference, 1996–2005.

AWARDS, HONORS: Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, 2004; Dogwood Poetry Prize, 2004, for the poem "Promenade"; Pushcart Prize, 2005; Walter E. Dakin fellow, Sewanee Writers' Conference, 2005; finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

WRITINGS:

Confusing Weather (chapbook), Black Cat Press (West Chester, PA), 1998.

The Optimist: Poems, Ohio University Press (Athens, OH), 2004.

Poems have appeared in numerous periodicals, including New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, Verse, New Criterion, Pequod, Formalist, Chattahoochee Review, Sewanee Review, Dogwood, and Illinois Review, and in online collections, including Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Ploughshares Authors & Articles, and Poem Tree. Poems and translations have appeared in anthologies, including Phoenix Rising, edited by Sonny Williams, Textos Books (Cincinnati, OH), 2004; Pushcart Prize XXX: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson, Pushcart, 2005; The Zoo Anthology of Younger Poets, edited by David Yezzi, Zoo Press, 2005; and Poetry in Performance 33, edited by Barry Wallenstein, City College of New York (New York, NY), 2005.

WORK IN PROGRESS: An untitled poetry manuscript and a verse translation of Arthur Rimbaud's poems.

SIDELIGHTS: Joshua Mehigan told John Freeman Gill in the New York Times that he had declared that he was going to give up writing when, an hour later, he learned he had won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. The prize included the publication of his book The Optimist: Poems. Another 1,000-dollar prize and growing recognition soon followed. "I think we're going to hear a lot about Joshua Mehigan," David Yezzi, director of the Unterberg Poetry Center, told Gill in the New York Times. "Josh is an extraordinary musician in language, with a very distinctive sound and rhythm and pitch." Mehigan writes realistic poems—from such everyday events as an old man walking in his apartment or an umbrella vendor watching people pass by on the streets—that sometimes incorporate life-changing events, such as a woman battling cancer. Writing on the Valparaiso Poetry Review online, D.A. Jeremy Telman commented: "Such realism, tinged with wary humor, characterizes many of Mehigan's poems, which describe events with such clarity, one is convinced that Mehigan himself has experienced them." Telman noted that the author's "technique is varied and irreproachable," adding that "Mehigan writes so well, he invites one to simply take pleasure in the reading, and he takes pains not to highlight his poems' intricacy and formal virtuosity." Telman also wrote that "Mehigan's first full-length poetry collection, The Optimist, not only repays re-reading, but requires it." In a review in Poetry, D.H. Tracy called the book "a work of some poise and finish, by turns delicate and robust, making balanced use of the imposing and receptive facets of intelligence."