UNIVERSITY PARK, PA — Award-winning poet and Poetry magazine editor Adrian Matejka will visit Penn State March 20-24 as this year’s Fisher Family Writer-in-Residence. He will give a free public reading as part of his visit at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 23, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
The Fisher Family Writer-in-Residence program brings a well-known poet, fiction writer, or nonfiction writer to campus each year to share their expertise and work with students in undergraduate creative writing classes and the graduate Creative Writing Program. It is funded primarily through the generosity of Steven Fisher, a 1970 Penn State graduate in English, with additional support from the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, University Libraries, the Department of English, and the College of the Liberal Arts.
Matejka is the author of five books of poetry: “The Devil’s Garden” (2003), “Mixology” (2009), “The Big Smoke” (2013), “Map to the Stars” (2017), and “Somebody Else Sold the World” (2021). His mixed-media collaboration with Nicholas Galanin and Kevin Neireiter inspired by Funkadelic, “Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain,” was published in 2021; his first graphic novel, “Last on His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century,” was published in February.
Matejka received the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, for “The Big Smoke.” The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards described Matejka’s poetry collection as “a marvelous, nuanced, polyphonic exploration of the life of boxer Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight world champion. Matejka mimics some of the cadence and physicality of boxing in this collection — particularly in the 14-line sonnets. A fan of the sport, Matejka was moved by this son of emancipated slaves, born in Texas just 13 years after the end of the Civil War and who loved Shakespeare, Verdi’s operas, travel abroad and a series of white women. Using various voices and multiple poetic forms, Matejka considers "the myth, the man, and those around him.”
Additional accolades for Matejka include a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19.
In May 2022, Adrian Matejka became the new editor of Poetry — the first Black editor in the magazine’s 110-year history. Tyehimba Jess, president of Cave Canem (a leading supporter of Black poets), praised Matejka’s appointment, saying: “Adrian’s vision of building literary community through excellence and diversity in publication is a critical step forward for Poetry. Adrian has a track record of service to history and the fullness of each reader and poet’s humanity.”