Duties of the Spirit
Patricia Fargnoli, the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from December 2006 to March 2009, is the author of six collections of poetry. Her newest book isThen, Something(Tupelo Press, fall 2009). Her fifth collection,Duties of the Spirit(Tupelo Press, 2005) won Jane Kenyon Literary Book Award for an Outstanding Book of Poetry and was a semifinalist for the Glasgow Prize. Her first book,Necessary Light(Utah State University Press, 1999) was awarded the 1999 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Mary Oliver. Her bookSmall Songs of Pain(Pecan Grove Press, 2003) is a collection of poems triggered by Chagalls illustrations of LaFontaines fables. In addition she has published two chapbooks:Lives of Others(Oyster River Press, 2003) andGreatest Hits(Pudding House Press, 2003).Fargnoli, a retired social worker, has won the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and was twice a semifinalist for the Discovery / The Nation Awards. A graduate of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, the Hartford College for Women, and the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, she was also awarded an honorary BFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Arts. A member of the New Hampshire Writers Project and the Monadnock Pastoral Poets, and a Touring Artist for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, she currently resides in Walpole, NH.