Chard deNiord

Chard deNiord is an American author, poet, and teacher. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife Liz.

Chard deNiord is the author of the poetry collections Asleep in the Fire (1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (2003), Night Mowing (2005), The Double Truth (2011), and Interstate (2015). His book Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs (2011) is a collection of interviews with American poets, including Robert Bly, Lucille Clifton, Jack Gilbert, Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, and Vermont Poet Laureate Ruth Stone.

DeNiord was born on December 17, 1952, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he attended Lynchburg College, earning a BA in religious studies. He later received a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Currently a professor at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, deNiord has been a Poetry Fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Allan Collins Scholar in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

DeNiord is the founder of the Spirit Letter Workshop, a ten-day program of workshops and lectures in Patzquaro, Mexico.

In addition, he co-founded the New England College Master of Fine Arts program in poetry. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and his poems have been included in the anthologies Pushcart Prize XXII (1998), Best American Poetry (1999), Best of the Prose Poem (2000), American Religious Poems (2006), and American Poetry Now (2007).

In 2015, DeNiord was named the Vermont State Poet Laureate.