Background
Clark grew up in southern California.
Clark grew up in southern California.
He studied at University of California Davis and completed a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the Iowa Writer"s Workshop. In 1995, he graduated from the Iowa workshop and moved to San Francisco, where he wrote poetry and edited a zine, Faucheuse.
At Davis, Clark drummed for the band Buick, whose album Sweatertongue was released by Lather Records in 1992. He also drummed for the Popealopes, and is featured on their album Slowest Eye, released by Italy"s Helter Skelter Records. He also worked for Wilsted & Taylor, a book design studio in Oakland, California.
Clark"s book design studio, Quemadura, is based in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
He has composed book covers and interiors for, among others, Flood Editions, Leon Works, Kelsey Street Press, the Jargon Society, Essay Press, Wake Forest University Press, Ahsahta Press, Dalkey Archive Press, Wave Books, Turtle Point Press, Farrar Straus Giroux, Black Square Editions, City Lights Books, the Ulrich Museum of Art, and MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit). He also designs the covers for Two Lincolnshire, the literary journal from the Center for the Art of Translation.
In January 2008, Publisher"s Weekly wrote: "Clark has become one of poetry"s most prolific and influential book designers, whose distinctive treatments—characterized by spacious covers. Hip, angular fonts; varied elements that elide into one another—a frequent poetry reader could recognize from a distance.".
John Beer in Chicago Review said "its ambition is more erotic than programmatic, which makes it hard to place in a critical landscape dominated by twin towers of linguistic materialism and idle taste-mongering.