Background
Larissa Szporluk was born on February 1, 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. She is a daughter of Roman Szporluk, a professor of history, and Mary Ann Szporluk, an editor and translator.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
In 1988 Larissa Szporluk received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan.
University of California Berkeley, Berkele, California, United States
In 1992 Larissa Szporluk obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
In 1994 Larissa Szporluk gained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Virginia.
(As Brenda Hillman notes in her Introduction, Larissa Szpo...)
As Brenda Hillman notes in her Introduction, Larissa Szporluk "creates an animate new universe out of cryptic original speech" in these poems. Exploring how the mind orders experience - and how disorder, or different orders, affect that experience - Szporluk has produced a poetry of alien beauty, limning worlds where the inability to exert control results in a disturbing, overwhelming immediacy.
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Question-Barnard-Women-Poets-ebook/dp/B001R4CKV0/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(This collection of short lyric poems evoke certain themes...)
This collection of short lyric poems evoke certain themes: interaction of and struggle between the human and natural world; violence, particularly against women and children; alienation and betrayal; the mysteries of the universe, God and death; and poetry itself.
https://www.amazon.com/Isolato-Poetry-Prize-Larissa-Szporluk/dp/0877457042/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(Haunting and spare, The Wind, Master Cherry, The Wind is ...)
Haunting and spare, The Wind, Master Cherry, The Wind is obsessed with fate’s fickle nature. Propelled by internal rhyme, these lyric poems draw on fairy tales and fables, stories from the Bible and from Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, their characters blown hither and thither by mythic winds - but -inevitably, toward an awareness of mortality.
https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Master-Cherry/dp/1882295390/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(This latest collection from the young but already establi...)
This latest collection from the young but already established luminary Larissa Szporluk is cause for celebration. Szporluk has proven once again that she not only deserves her elevated status in the poetry world, but reinvents and advances it with each new collection. This is spare, sly, seductive, and haunting poetry that resonates long after the rustle of the page. Szporluk has an uncanny ability to hone her words until their edges slice like small, deep paper cuts, whittling away at the human experience, searching for the truth of things. Despite her three previously published-and much heralded-works, this visionary poet continues to innovate. She remains completely unpredictable, as if these visceral poems lead her to extraordinary places of their own volition. She writes of mother-son relationships, political and social events-always with an underlying mythic aspect, and always demonstrating an undeniable faith in the human spirit.
https://www.amazon.com/Embryos-Idiots-Larissa-Szporluk/dp/1932195521/?tag=2022091-20
2007
(A buffeting sequence of dramatic monologues that provoke ...)
A buffeting sequence of dramatic monologues that provoke and disturb, Larissa Szporluk's Traffic with Macbeth evokes a dark world linked to the black magic of Shakespeare's tortured Scottish assassin, usurper of kings. Baroque in their sweep of high style and low slang, melody and dissonance, these poems use shifting animate and inanimate speakers and surrealist leaps to convey human brutality, the vulnerability of women and children, madness, and the struggle to escape the limitations of this world. "Larissa Szporluk is no coward soul, and her poems have always taken dark, unflinching, daring risks, thematically and linguistically.
https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Macbeth-Masters-Larissa-Szporluk/dp/193679702X/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(Haunted by visions of loss and the ongoing violence of th...)
Haunted by visions of loss and the ongoing violence of the body, these poems unfold like memories through time as personal tragedies become dark fairy tales. Startle Pattern illustrates that a passing of years does not create healing: that pain, after fully seizing the physical, bleeds into the psyche.
https://www.amazon.com/Startle-Pattern-Company-Surrealist-Poetry/dp/0983231753/?tag=2022091-20
2015
Larissa Szporluk was born on February 1, 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. She is a daughter of Roman Szporluk, a professor of history, and Mary Ann Szporluk, an editor and translator.
In 1988 Larissa Szporluk received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan. In 1992 she obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1994 Szporluk gained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Virginia.
From 1989 to 1990 Larissa Szporluk was an instructor in rhetoric at the University of Iowa. From 1993 to 2004 she served as an instructor in poetry at the University of Virginia. From 1996 to 1999 Szporluk was an adjunct assistant professor at Bowling Green State University and was appointed an assistant professor of creative writing in 1999. Currently, she is a professor there. In 2005 she was a visiting professor at Cornell University. She gives readings from her works, including appearances at Lynchburg College, the University of Texas at Austin, Boise State University, and Barnard College.
Her books of poetry include Dark Sky Question (1998), Isolato (2000), The Wind, Master Cherry, the Wind (2003), Embryos and Idiots (2007), and Traffic with Macbeth (2011). Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including Daedalus, Faultline, Meridian, American Poetry Review, and Black Warrior Review.
(This collection of short lyric poems evoke certain themes...)
2000(A buffeting sequence of dramatic monologues that provoke ...)
2011(Haunted by visions of loss and the ongoing violence of th...)
2015(As Brenda Hillman notes in her Introduction, Larissa Szpo...)
1998(This latest collection from the young but already establi...)
2007(Haunting and spare, The Wind, Master Cherry, The Wind is ...)
2003Larissa Szporluk once told about what influence her: "Emily Dickinson, Rilke, Wallace Stevens, Lorca are just a few of my influences. I have also been heavily influenced by the film director Werner Herzog, whose themes of obsession and far reaches of psychological landscape fascinate me. Imagery, however, is the pre-dominant link: I read, watch, even listen for the curious, the incredible, and the disturbing in imagery."
Larissa Szporluk is a member of the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets.
On November 24, 1995 Larissa Szporluk married Carlo Celli. They have two children: Mario Celli and Sofia Celli.