David Roderick
Photo by Victoria Remler
Bio
David Roderick is the author of Blue Colonial (American Poetry Review, 2006), winner of the APR/Honickman Award, and The Americans (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), winner of the Julie Suk Award. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Roderick’s other honors include the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize, and the James Boatwright III Prize from Shenandoah. New poems have appeared recently in the Adroit Journal, the Georgia Review, Juke Joint, New England Review, and Ploughshares. Roderick co-directs and teaches at Left Margin LIT, a creative writing center serving writers in Berkeley, California. He also serves as the commissioner of Old Man Basketball, an East Bay basketball collective.
Though I don’t believe artists should chase after subject matter, it’s impossible to deny the great, messy project of America has been an artistic obsession throughout my writing life. Looking back, maybe this was inevitable. I grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where tourists regularly flocked to Plymouth Rock and the replica of the Mayflower. At a young age I learned that our history, the story we tell about ourselves, is partial and distorted.
To maintain my faith in poetry, and to keep writing it, I have to believe that poetry still has the power to dispel myths and inspire a passion for truth. That it can embody some sort of fellow feeling. That it can still, to borrow a phrase from Natasha Trethewey, “reveal what is invisible.”
For these reasons, it’s immensely gratifying at this particular time to be named a Creative Writing Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. Knowing the NEA poetry panelists found value in my work has inspired and humbled me. Their recognition will help me approach my next book of poems, Darkness for Beginners, with more confidence and purpose.