Pattiann Rogers

Pattiann Rogers (born 1940) is an American poet, and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

She was born in Joplin, Missouri, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri in 1961.

She received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Houston in 1981.

She taught as a visiting writer at the University of Texas, the University of Montana, and at Washington University in St. Louis.

She was the Ferrol Sams Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Mercer University and was on the faculty of the low residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Pacific University.

The Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest was awarded in 1981.

Poetry awarded her poems the Tietjens Prize in 1981, the Hokin Prize in 1982, and the Bock Prize in 1998.

She has received two NEA Grants, 1982 and 1988, a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1984–85, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 1991 and a Lannan Literary Awards for Poetry in 2005.

She received five Pushcart Prizes Best of the Small Presses 1984, 1985, 1989, 1992 and 1999 editions.

She was the 1987 poet in residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH.

She was associate professor, and taught in the MFA Creative Writing Program during the spring semesters, 1993 to 1997, at the University of Arkansas.

Two Prairie Schooner Strousse Awards were won in 1993 and 1996.

Firekeeper was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books Published in 1994, was one of five finalists for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (given by the Academy of American Poets) in 1994, and received the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Her poetry appeared in The Best American Poetry of 1996 selected by Adrienne Rich, and The Best American Poetry of 2009, selected by David Wagoner.

Her poems were selected for publication in Best Spiritual Writing for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2010 editions.

She was a judge for the National Poetry Series in 1999 and 2004, and co-poetry editor with Carl Phillips for the 2003 Pushcart Prize XXVII, Best of the Small Presses.

In May 2000, she was in residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.

She is a contributing editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review.

She was in residency at the Rockefeller's International Conference and Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, May, 2000.

Song of the World Becoming (Milkweed Editions, 2001) contains all of Rogers' poems previously published in her books through 2001, 40 new poems, and line and title indexes.

It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was named an Editor's Choice, Top of the List by Booklist.

Ms. Rogers is the mother of renowned materials scientist Professor John A. Rogers, currently at Northwestern University.

The Language of Conservation, the Milwaukee Zoo's permanent exhibit of 54 signs containing lines of poetry installed throughout the zoo opened on June 19, 2010.

Pattiann Rogers was the Zoo's honorary poet and curator for the exhibit, which was produced in collaboration with the Milwaukee Public Library, the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, along with the Milwaukee County Zoo.

Pattiann Rogers on the project: I wanted the poems to offer a new perspective, a different way of looking at landscapes and animals. A story on The Language of Conservation in the June 2010 issue of Wild Things, the Zoological Society's Newsletter.

A Terrain.org article about the project written by Pattiann Rogers: Under The Open Sky: Poems On The Land. A map of the poetry installations at the zoo.

Address to the Zoo: 10001 West Bluemound Road, Milwaukee, WI 53226-4383

The Language of Conservation, Poetry in Library and Zoo Collaborations, Jane Preston, Editor; Sandra Alcosser, Lee Briccetti, Dr. John Fraser, Dr. Dan Wharton, Executive Editors; Poets House, New York City, NY, 2013.

(This project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.) www.poetshouse.org

Rogers worked with sculptor Steve Wood of Public Art Associates to create this bench along the American Discovery Trail in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, at the base of Pikes Peak.

It is a 4' x 15' concrete, stone and ceramic tile bench meant to withstand the elements for many years.

The poems by Pattiann Rogers are on the tile pieces interspersed around the bench meant to be read at various angles of an oncoming potential reader.

Here is a nice description of the bench with pictures by Lauren Carroll.

More about the trails and projects around the Pikes Peak area.

Exact location of the bench.

Finding Poems Under the Open Sky, presents photographs and text on five different poetry trails installed in five different locations in the U.S..

One of the five sections (text by Pattiann Rogers) describes the goals and installations of the Milwaukee County Zoo signs and photographs.

In 2018, she was awarded a special John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry.

Pattiann Rogers is an American poet living in Colorado with her husband and has two sons and three grandsons.

In 2018, Rogers received a special John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry.