"When words deserted me,
whole days escaped in air."
- Out of Silence
Ms. Harrison is an accomplished writer and teacher, specializing in poetry and non-fiction. Her writing has been featured in various publications, and she has recently published three books available at most major retailers. Please browse the site for information on her background, books, reviews, and upcoming readings.
Welcome to the Official Website of
Pamela Harrison
Curriculum Vitae
Education
Vermont College; Montpelier, VT
MFA in Writing Poetry
University of Western Ontario; London, Ontario, Canada
Post Grad, Philosophy
Smith College; Northampton, MA
B.A. English Literature, minor in History
Experience
Publications
Out of Silence, Poems, David Robert Books, www.davidrobertbooks.com, Cincinnati, OH, June, 2009.
Okie Chronicles, Poems, David Robert Books, www.davidrobertbooks.com, Cincinnati, OH, October 2005.
Stereopticon, Poems, David Robert Books, www.davidrobertbooks.com Cincinnati, OH, June 2004.
Pamela Harrison: Greatest Hits 1981-2000 (Poetry Chapbook), Pudding House Publications, Johnstown, OH (www.puddinghouse.com), 2002.
“The Shape of Things: An Architectural Guide to the Poetry Wars of the Late Twentieth Century” (Critical Essay), The Arkansas Quarterly, Fall, 1992.
Noah’s Daughter (Poetry Chapbook), Winner, Panhandler Chapbook Competition, Series #1, University of West Florida, 1988.
Poems have appeared in the following publications (selected):
The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Caribbean Writer, The College Handbook of Creative Writing, Cimarron Review, Connecticut River Review, The Contemporary Review, Fiction International, The Georgia Review, Great River Review, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Laurel Review, The Madison Review, New England Review, NFSPS Prize Poem Anthology, Passages North, Poetry, Poetry NOW, The Poetry Miscellany, Seneca Review, Southern Poetry Review, Yankee Magazine
Of Note -
Selected Awards, Residencies and Readings
- Alumnae Sampler Reading, The Poetry Center, Smith College, May 2008
- Frost Place Seminar Reading, August, 2007
- Café Muse Reading, Chevy Chase, MD, Oct. 2007
- Night and Day Reading Series, Brooklyn, NY, Aug. 2007
- Blues for Bill Memorial Reading, Berkshire School, Sheffield, MA, Apr. 2006
- Pastoral Celebration Exhibition, Marsh Billings Estate, July, 2006
- Beyond Sylvia Plath Reading, Arlington, VA, Oct. 2006
- Dartmouth Book Store Reading, Dec. 2005
- Norwich Book Store, Norwich, VT, Nov. 2005
- Featured Reader, Book and Author Luncheon, Southbury, CT April, 2005
- Bear Pond Books Reading, Montpelier, VT, Apr. 2005
- Casady School Alumni Achievement Award, Oct. 2004
- Canaan Meeting House Reading, August, 2004
- Reading, Poetry at Noon, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.— 2003
- PEN Northern New England Discovery Poet Award—2002
- Vermont Studio Center Fellowships, Johnson, VT— 1994, 1996, 1999
- MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Peterborough, NH— 1998
- Alternate, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA— 1997
- Nominee for Pushcart Prize, 1990, 93-96
Buy
Readings
TBD
Praise
"On the cards slipped into the old stereopticons were two separate images that were supposed to merge as you adjusted your eyes. Pamela Harrison infuses this metaphorical idea with the unique wisdom of her experiences in her rich collection of poems, Stereopticon. Stanza by stanza she shows us how each moment is alive with the past and the present, the cloaked and the revealed. The whole book shines with this blended magic, each poem worldly, yet fresh."--Molly Peacock
"Pamela Harrison's poetic landscape is as intimate as her own corner of Vermont and as exotic and alien as Uganda in the first year of Idi Amin's brutal reign. The accuracy of her images, the sharpness of her senses, her acute and inclusive observation earn our confidence. Specifically and gravely, Ms. Harrison has rendered wide-ranging, profound experiences into poems that fulfill a need in her listeners. Though it be, inevitably, an act of faith, they feel themselves changed by her song."--Sydney Lea
"In Stereopticon, Pamela Harrison proves, as she says in one of her poems, that 'Some kinds of knowing change all the rules of sight'--for the knowledge revealed here in writing that is as economical as it is graceful, as unstintingly honest as it is imaginative„enriches and deepens the landscape of the inner life. So few of todayÍs contemporary poets concern themselves with this shift in the ground of knowing, this epistemological function, and yet it is one of the supreme purposes of poetry. But, lest you think the writing here dry, let me say the poems sparkle and flare, and venture, as Yeats would have it, to the deep heart's core, quietly unfolding the passionate intensity that braids them tonally to an aesthetically-charged vision that is about as pure and crystalline as any one might encounter in this art."--Gray Jacobik
"There is nothing soft and blurry or merely decorative about the deeply etched, beautifully wrought poems in Pamela Harrison's Stereopticon. Here is a jeweler peering through her loupe at the hard edges and dazzlement of the daily. And she has a God's-eye-view."--Jack Myers
“In the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, Okies traveled west away from hopelessness. Here we see the second and third generations, man woman and child, poem by poem, in hard times but also beautiful in the illuminated detail that is the work of poetry.”—Grace Paley
"Writing in lines as tough, supple, and capable of heart- breaking grace as the lives of her characters, Pamela Harrison locates poetry where few in postmodern American culture seem to believe, or acknowledge, it existed: the working-class Southwest, specifically Ferlin Husky’s Oklahoma. What in contemporary poetry could be more unfashionable than the lyric embrace of men and women formerly known to us only in the stereotypes of bad movies and truck commercials? Okie Chronicles is a history of a people and of a place, but it is also poetry of a high order, as artfully nuanced and evocative as it is intellectually complex.” —B.H. Fairchild
Contact
A Singular View
Because we are the flower
of some family, grown in rooms
where the afternoon light slides
over cracked linoleum and the arms
of battered chairs, where relatives
crowd in bearing cakes and pickles
and stay till the ashtrays overflow;
because context is everything,
residue of a past which by constant
rubbing makes our thighs hairless,
our hairlines recede, wears ruts
in our hearing, grooves in our nerves;
because it shapes our connections, rules
the grammar we must wrestle to enlarge;
and wherever it binds, where it twists
or bends our lives, there our words
echo the contours of our being,
the bones of a particular life
on which time works
to make a singular view—
not beautiful but true.
©2009-2010 Pamela Harrison McCullough. All Rights reserved. No images or writing may be used without express permission.
Author Photo Credit Lia Rothstein. All rights reserved - photo may not be copied or used without express permission of the artist.
