Peter Jay Shippy (USA)1961
Peter Jay Shippy was born in Niagara Falls, New York. He was raised on his family’s apple farm, on the shore of Lake Ontario. He was educated at Northwestern University, Emerson College and the University of Iowa, where he received an M.F.A.
Shippy’s first book, Thieves’ Latin (University of Iowa Press) won the 2002 Iowa Poetry Prize. BlazeVOX Books published Alphaville in 2006. About Thieves’ Latin, Bin Ramke, editor of the Denver Quarterly wrote, “Shippy’s strange little machines of words are all kinetic, disturbing, and weirdly graceful, unlike anything else available in American poetry.
His work has been published in numerous journals, including The American Poetry Review, Fence, FIELD, The Iowa Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Ploughshares, among others. Shippy has been awarded writing fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Emerson College and lives with his wife in Jamaica Plain, MA.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Thieves’ Latin (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003); Alphaville (Buffalo: BlazeVOX Books, 2006); How to Build a Ghost in Your Attic (Rose Metal Press, 2007); Spell of Songs (Saturnalia Books, 2013); Kaputniks (Saturnalia, 2021)
╬Winner of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English
2005-2006
from Alphaville
17
Luna moths,
nightglow, orange
pekoe, quayside,
red spiders
tat, undulant
velocipedes weave
xenias.
Years zeroize.
Zills yearn.
Xuzhou
weeps vines.
Umbrella trees
stalk,
raining quirks.
______
Reprinted from Aught, no. 15 (2005). Copyright ©2005 by Peter Jay Shippy.