POETRY SECTION MENTOR: BRAD BUCHANAN
Brad is not unfamiliar to publishing, having published poems in more than 120 journals worldwide. His first book of poems, entitled The Miracle Shirker, was published in 2005 (Poet’s Corner Press), and won an Honorable Mention in the 2005 Writer’s Digest Book Awards. His book-length study of the fiction of Hanif Kureishi appeared from Palgrave Macmillan Press’s New British Fiction Series in 2007, and a revised version of his dissertation is currently under consideration at a major academic press. Most recently, his book of poems, Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter is a celebration of the relationship between a father and his daughter - published by his own company, Roan Press.
Brad earned a B.A. in English from McGill University (in Canada), a M.A. in English from the University of Toronto (also in Canada), and a PhD in English from Stanford University (2001). Currently, Brad teaches at Sacramento State University. He believes that students can appreciate poetry best when they understand its formal qualities and can analyze it as something qualitatively different from prose. He has great hopes that a return to a measure of formalism in poetry can reawaken the younger generation’s innate love of recurring speech rhythms (as evinced by the popularity of rap and hip-hop).
Brad is an active member of the poetry community. He is Executive Board Member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, where he also serves as the editor of the Tule Review, the biannual poetry magazine, and as a member of the Sacramento Poetry Center Press’s editorial and publicity committee. In addition, he is the founder and chief organizer of two poetry contests for the Sacramento Poetry Center: a free contest for local high school students and an annual book manuscript contest. For the last three years, Brad has been a coach, contest judge and visiting poet for Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest sponsored by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation. Finally, in January of 2008, he had the unusual pleasure and privilege of testifying about the importance of poetry before the Arts and Entertainment Committee of the California Legislature.
