Midwest Poets Series: David Baker

Baker is often described as a poet of place, indebted to the American Romantic tradition of Emerson and Whitman, as well as Frost. His poems typically explore an individual’s sense of and engagement with their natural surroundings, and embrace complicated notions of history, home and memory; Baker himself has delineated the importance of landscape and place to his poetry. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including widely-acclaimed Changeable Thunder (2001), Midwest Eclogue (2007), Never-Ending Birds (2009), and Scavenger Loop (2015), and works of literary criticism.

Born in Bangor, Maine, Baker spent much of his childhood in Missouri, graduating from Central Missouri State University before receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Utah. He has received fellowships and awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Baker is currently a professor of English and the Thomas B. Fordham Chair in Creative Writing at Denison University, Baker is also the editor of the Kenyon Review. He lives in Granville, Ohio.