Sally Van Doren

Sally Van Doren Poems

Sally Van Doren Biography

Sally Van Doren is an American poet from St. Louis, Missouri. She was awarded the 2007 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for her first collection of poems. Her most recent book of poetry, Possessive, was published in 2012. Sally Van Doren was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She is a graduate of Phillips Academy and Princeton University and received an M.F.A. from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has taught creative writing for the St. Louis Public Schools, Washington University in St. Louis and the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center. She curates the Sunday Workshop Series for the St. Louis Poetry Center. She is an associate editor at Boulevard and an advisory editor at December. She lives in St. Louis and Cornwall, Connecticut. Van Doren's work has appeared in: Barrow Street, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, LIT, Margie, Parthenon West Review, Poetry Daily, Pool, River Styx and Southwest Review. Her poem, "The Sense Series," was the text for a multimedia performance at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Van Doren also read at the Princeton Poetry festival. Van Doren is related to several other well-known poets and writers, including Charles Van Doren and poet Mark Van Doren. Van Doren was awarded the 2007 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for her first collection of poems, "Sex at Noon Taxes," which was published in the spring of 2008 by LSU Press. She was a semi-finalist in the 2006 "Discovery"/The Nation Poetry Contest. Van Doren received the Kenneth O. Hanson Award in 2013 from Hubbub magazine for her poem, “Color Theory.” She is the recipient of the Loy Ledbetter Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center. She also was a finalist in the Poets Out Loud Prize in 2012-2013.)

The Best Poem Of Sally Van Doren

Thief

I remember the hour
you stole time from me
and here in these late pages
I try to collect back
the kisses in the parking lot
that erased my history
next to that green F-150
when you became my future.

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