Poet of the Month

<body link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080"> <font size="5"><p>Poet of the Month: David Mason</p> </font><p>Your browser does not support the frame format of this site. To view the site in a more conventional format, click <a href="contents.html">HERE</a>.</p> <p>David Mason was born in Bellingham, Washington, on December<br> 11, 1954. His father was a pediatrician (formerly a Naval officer), his<br> mother a professor of psychology at the local college. He grew up<br> surrounded by bookish people who were also active skiers, mountain<br> climbers and sailors. But his family was troubled, and by the time Mason<br> entered the sixth grade his parents had separated.</p> <p>In 1973, Mason began studies at The Colorado College. In high<br> school his primary interest had been theatre, but in College he thought of<br> himself as a writer. After the freshman year, he left school and spent seven<br> months unloading crab and shrimp boats in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, earning<br> more than enough money to spend another seven months hitchhiking the<br> perimeter of the British Isles, with visits to Ireland, France and Spain.<br> When he returned to college in 1975, he studied with new purpose, and<br> also began a novel set in Alaska.</p> <p>He married Jonna Heinrich in April 1978, and later they moved to<br> her hometown, Rochester, New York, where Mason worked as a gardener,<br> writing in his spare time, and his wife worked in her father's business. In<br> August 1979, his older brother, Douglas, was killed while climbing Mt.<br> Shuksan in Washington State. His younger brother, Donald, had been on<br> the climb, but was not injured.</p> <p>In 1980-81, Mason and his wife lived for thirteen months in a small<br> Greek village, returning to the US when his Alaskan novel had been<br> optioned by a film company and he had been hired to write the screenplay.<br> Working in LA, Bellingham and Rochester, Mason pursued the life of a<br> professional writer until the company closed its film division and paid off<br> his contract. He tried part-time teaching at The Colorado College, and in<br> 1989, after failing to make a living at anything else, he began graduate<br> studies at The University of Rochester, where one of his teachers was a<br> poet he had long admired, Anthony Hecht. At the same time, his first<br> marriage failed. Divorce and the death of his brother became major subjects<br> in his writing, but he also maintained his interest in narratives of other<br> peoples' lives.</p> <p>In 1988 he married Anne Lennox, a photojournalist, and the<br> following year, his Ph.D. completed, they moved to Moorhead, Minnesota,<br> where he teaches at Moorhead State University. Since then, he has<br> produced essays, reviews, stories, poems and translations for such<br> periodicals as The Hudson Review, Grand Street, Poetry, The Southern<br> Review and The New Criterion. His books are The Buried Houses (1991),<br> The Country I Remember (1996) and, with Mark Jarman, Rebel Angels: 25<br> Poets of the New Formalism (1996), all from Story Line Press. There have<br> also been several chapbooks and limited editions. Winner of The Nicholas<br> Roerich Poetry Prize and The Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di<br> Castagnola Award, he has been a Fulbright Writer-in-Residence in Greece,<br> and has also taught at The Wesleyan Writer's Conference, The West<br> Chester Conference, The Colorado College and the Kerry International<br> Summer School in Ireland.</p> <p>Currently he is completing a book of essays, The Poetry of Life and<br> the Life of Poetry, due out from Story Line in 1999, and is at work on a<br> book of stories, a new collection of poems, a book-length memoir of<br> Greece, a translation of Greek poet Yiorgos Chouliaras, and, with John<br> Frederick Nims, the 4th Edition of Western Wind, a poetry textbook. He<br> lives in Moorhead, where his wife works as a freelance photographer. His<br> stepdaughter, Darcy, is grown up and lives with her husband in<br> Minneapolis.</p> <p><br> <br> </p> </body>