Anthony Caleshu

Anthony Caleshu is a contemporary poet, born in Massachusetts, USA in 1970. He moved to Ireland in 1997 and to England in 2003 to become lecturer in English and Creative Writing at University of Plymouth, where since 2012 he has been Professor of Poetry.
He is the author of 5 books of poetry: Xenia etc. (Shearsman, 2023); See author's page on Shearsman website () and Salt website ().
He won the Boston Review Poetry Prize in 2010, for a suite of 5 poems which would later appear in his book The Victor Poems. Editors of the Boston Review cited the poems for their 'playful and plaintive addresses to the ever-absent Victor [that] read like pings to a god who never shows up when you really need him.' Other English-language journals in which his work appear include Granta and The Manchester Review. His poetry has also appeared in poetry anthologies such as The New Irish Poets (Ed. Selina Guinness, Bloodaxe, 2004), and Best British Poetry (Ed. Mark Ford, Salt, 2014). 
A review of his book, A Dynamic Exchange Between Us, appeared in 2020 in Times Literary Supplement, referring to his poetic 'impulses [as] maverick', and the poems as 'intense, disorienting little blocks of prose, few dropping more than halfway down the page, all in the same insistent, urgent voice.' Another review of this book appeared in Litter and referred to 'prose poems which combine the spiritual with the secular in a manner which is entertaining, provocative, ever-so-slightly anguished at times and filled with wonderful wordplay which often verges on the deeply philosophical.'
The TLS review of the earlier book, Of Whales: in Print, in Paint, in Sea, in Stars, in Coin, in House, in Margins, referred to it as 'triumphant work... Through crystalline images and lines who apophthegmatic weight is often buoyed by dry wit, Caleshu holds up a mirror before us.' This book was also named a 'Book of the Year' by Philip Hoare in The Telegraph: 'I… relished the mad Melvillean poetry of Anthony Caleshu’s collection, Of Whales, an imaginative update of the equally subversive Moby-Dick for the 21st century.’ The Warwick Review noted: 'Of Whales is a remarkable work in which the author speaks to his infant son, his words given depth and timelessness by the sea that is a part of their family experience, and the history of whaling, that is the books’ other theme…. The tone of the book is wry, subversive, sometimes wisful… Caleshu has taken his themes and his literary sources and made of them something new and exciting.’
In addition to his books of poetry, He co-edited the anthology, Poetry and Covid-19: An Anthology of Contemporary, International, and Collaborative Poetry (Shearsman, 2021), which paired 19 UK poets with 19 poets from elsewhere in the world, and which was reviewed in The Guardian as 'brilliantly eclectic, a testament to poetry’s power to reimagine and remake.' He has been editor-publisher of the small poetry press, Periplum (ongoing, since 2016), and was founding-editor of Short Fiction: The Visual Journal (2007-2016).
His other creative publications include a novella (Churchtown: The Tale of Suzy Delou and Faye Fiddle; winner of the Great Little Reads prize from Roast Books); the play, In the Bedroom (premiere, Galway Town Hall, 2003); and various short stories, such as published in The Dublin Review..
Category:1970 births
Category:People from Massachusetts
Category:Poets
Category:Author