Mark Irwin

Mark Irwin’s thirteen collections of poetry include Once When Green (Juniper Prize for Poetry, 2025), Joyful Orphan (2023), Shimmer (2020) Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, American UrnNew & Selected Poems (1987- 2014), Tall If (2009), and Bright Hunger (2004). He recently completed a long translation project entitled Zanzibar: Selected Poems & Letters of Arthur Rimbaud, with an afterword by Alain Borer.
  • Three Poems and a Translation

    In life I was chasing a deer. In sleep the deer
  • Yes

    Yes, all things of water and our days rounded with light, yes,
  • Bright in June Sun

    The young man, kneeling at his mother’s tomb, lays red tulips there,
  • Sometimes,

    I’ll crumple the paper before beginning to write
  • Circus

    How the squirrel, skittish, leaps, lobbing its orange
  • Powder

    Yesterday I opened your pill box, and there