ELIZABETH BISHOP: AN AMERICAN WRITER
“All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper – just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.”
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short story writer, publishing six poetry collections and numerous stories in her lifetime. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was once described by Dwight Garner—longtime writer and editor for The New York Times —as perhaps “the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century.”
Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in February 1911. Her father died when she was eight months old, and her mother was institutionalized five years later. Effectively orphaned, Bishop spent time with her grandparents in Nova Scotia before settling with her aunt Maude back in Massachusetts. And it was Maude who introduced her key writers including Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Thomas Carlyle, helping spark Bishop’s interest in poetry.
Bishop attended Vassar College New York in the fall of 1929 to study composition, switching to English after developing a fear of public performance. She co-founded Con Spirito , a rebel literary magazine in 1933 while still studying at Vassar.
“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I’m sure it’s a good one, and the same goes for paintings.”
Inheritance from her father allowed Bishop the luxury of not working at a conventional job, enabling her to travel extensively before settling for a while in France in the mid-1930s. After a short period as Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress, she traveled again; a more ambitious plan this time, to circumnavigate South America by boat. When she arrived in Santos, Brazil, in late 1951, Bishop’s expected two-week stay turned into 15 years, during which she was heavily influenced by the literature and writers of her adopted country.
Bishop’s first poetry collection, North & South , was published in 1946. Nine years later, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her second volume, Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring . Her third volume, Questions of Travel , was published 1965.
Bishop largely avoided the “personal confessional” approach in her work, preferring an objective, distant perspective instead, maintaining a reticence and discretion when writing about details and people from her own life. Nor did she did see herself as a “lesbian poet” or a “female poet,” refusing to have her work published in all-female poetry collections. She considered herself to be “a strong feminist” but only wanted to be judged based on the quality of her work and not have it seen through a lens of gender or sexual orientation.
After her death in 1979, the Elizabeth Bishop House , an artists’ retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia, was dedicated to her memory. Vassar College Library acquired her literary and personal papers in 1981, and her personal correspondence and manuscripts appear in numerous other literary collections in American research libraries. She is buried in Hope Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts.
“Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs; no regular hours, so many temptations!”
HIGHLIGHT
Tuesday, June 29, from 9am–12:30pm
Big Brush Painting Workshop
With Joe Gallant
Paint large! Experience the fun, freedom, and spontaneity of using large inexpensive brushes to create paintings. Using big brushes and water-mixable oil or acrylic paints, full-time artist Joe Gallant will demonstrate and guide you through the steps of creating your own seascape or landscape painting that just might become a focal point in your home or office! You will complete your own oil or acrylic painting during this fun one-day socially-distanced workshop. Joe will provide a reference photo of a scene that will be painted. Suitable for adult beginners, intermediate painters, and past participants in Joe’s workshops. If you have ever felt unsure of yourself when you start a painting, here’s your chance to learn an exciting technique that just might change the way you paint forever!
$75 – Member, $90 – Non Member
– 2 spots left!
