Amy Dryansky

Amy Dryansky’s Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry, Ireland) received the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. How I Got Lost So Close to Home, won the New England/New York Award from Alice James. Her Individual poems are included in several anthologies and journals, including Barrow Street, Harvard Review, New England Review, Memorious, Orion, The Sun, Tin House and The Women’s Review of Books. Dryansky has been awarded two poetry fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is former poet laureate for the city of Northampton, MA.

In addition to her life as a poet, she has two kids and works full-time. The conditions of parenting and working figure largely in Amy Dryansky’s poetry–how could they not? After her kids were born and she suffered from terrible writer’s block, she spent a year as an Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, where her research project was focused on the impact of motherhood on women poets, i.e., thinking about why she couldn’t write anymore. She considered this project to be a lifesaver. While at the FCWSRC Amy started a blog, Pokey Mama, to explore the experience of trying to understand and integrate the experiences of mother and poet. Pokey Mama is not only for herself, but also for the many, many women out there struggling to wrap their minds around their reality as artist. If this sounds like you then Pokey Mama is for you.