Mercer has selected poet Mark Jarman as the Ferrol A. Sams Jr. Distinguished Writer in Residence for 2009. As part of the appointment, he will teach a writing course and give several public readings and lectures in February.
Jarman is the author of eight collections of poetry, including most recently, Epistles (Sarabande, 2007), a meditation on the goodness of God. His other collections include: To the Green Man (Sarabande, 2004); Unholy Sonnets (2000); Questions for Ecclesiastes, which won the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Black Riviera (1990), which won the 1991 Poets' Prize; Far and Away (1985); The Rote Walker (1981); and North Sea (1978). In 1992 he published Iris, a book-length poem. Two collections of his essays have been published as books, The Secret of Poetry (2001) and Body and Soul (2002).
Jarman's poetry and essays have been published widely in such periodicals and journals as American Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Southern Review and The Yale Review. During the 1980s, he and Robert McDowell founded, edited and published the controversial magazine, The Reaper, selections from which have been published in book form as The Reaper Essays (1996). He is also co-editor with David Mason of Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (1996).
A native of Kentucky, Jarman is the Centennial Professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Vanderbilt University.
