Alison Townsend

Alison Townsend (born Pennsburg, Pennsylvania) is an American poet.

She grew up in New York. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Her work has appeared in Calyx, Clackamas Literary Review, Fourth Genre, New Letters, The North American Review, and The Southern Review.

She is married and lives outside Madison, Wisconsin.

• 2009 Pushcart Prize
• 2008 Crab Orchard Award
• 2004 Diner poetry contest

• "Jane Morris Poses For Rossetti’s Proserpine"; "Demeter Faces Facts", Mudlark Poster No. 79, 2009
• "Spin", Rattle, July 2008

Poetry

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•  (Flume Press chapbook prize winner, 2007).

Anthologies

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Essays

• "Faculty Essay: The World Outside My Window - balancing teaching and the creative life", ENVISION Magazine, Winter 2007

The dilemma with this book is that every time I start to read it, I find myself putting it down to write—my own memories surfacing, requiring the light of paper to see. C.K. Williams says of memory in his poem “Lessons” from The Singing, “How even know in truth how much / of mind should be memory, no less / what portion of self should be others / rather than self?” Are our own truths, our own selves defined by our memories?

Persephone in America (Southern Illinois University Press) is the latest book of poetry from Alison Townsend. It follows 2003’s The Blue Dress (White Pine) with more strong work that delves into the stressful state of womanhood and femininity in the United States today. It is beautiful poetry, but it is not a pleasant picture.