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Terry Blackhawk is the founder and director of Detroit's acclaimed InsideOut Literary Arts
Project, a poets-in-schools program serving over 5,000 youth per year. She began teaching English in 1968 after graduating
from Antioch College, and took up writing poetry,
herself, when she was already teaching it to her students. "I
thought, 'If I'm asking them to do this, I should have the same experience
myself.’ “ “I fell in love with it. I became a poet. It's who I am."
Terry's poetry collections include Body & Field
(Michigan State University Press, 1999); Escape Artist (BkMk
Press, 2003), selected by Molly Peacock for the John Ciardi Prize; and The
Dropped Hand (Marick Press, 2007). She has published two chapbooks, Trio:
Voices from the Myths (Ridgeway Press, 1998) and Greatest Hits 1989-2003 (Pudding House Press). Her poems have
appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Marlboro Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Florida Review, Borderlands, Artful Dodge,
The MacGuffin and Nimrod. Her essays have been published in Review
Revue, An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia, Language Arts Journal of Michigan and
anthologies from Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She was a finalist for the 2009 Pablo Neruda Prize from
Nimrod Press for “Out of the Labyrinth” and other poems. She has received many recognitions for her teaching, including
Creative Writing Educator of the Year from the Michigan Youth Arts Festival
(2008), a Humanities Award from Wayne County Arts, History and Humanities
Council (2008), and 2007 Detroit Bookwoman of the Year from the Women’s
National Book Association.
The oldest of four children, Terry remembers her
youth as a sort of movable feast. Her father, Ben Bohnhorst, was a
much-traveled professor of education; her mother, Marie, a pianist. There was
little money, but loads of culture. "The piano followed us wherever we
moved." She is the mother of the historian Ned Blackhawk and grandmother
to Eva and Tobias. |