Poets

Matthew Rohrer (born 1970) is an American poet. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rohrer was raised in Oklahoma. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan (where he won a Hopwood Award for poetry) and a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Iowa. His first book of poetry, A Hummock in the Malookas (1995), was selected by Mary Oliver for the 1994 National Poetry Series. In 2005, his collection A Green Light was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize. James Tate said of A Green Light, "There are poems in A Green Light that can break your heart with their unexpected twists and turns. You think you know where you are and then you don't and it is inexplicably sad. You experience some kind of emotion that you can't even name, but it's deep and real. That's the power of Matthew Rohrer's new poems." He was poetry editor for Fence magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches at New York University.