Donna Spruijt-Metz
Current City, State, Country
Biography
Donna Spruijt-Metz’s books are To Phrase a Prayer for Peace (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025), General Release from the Beginning of the World (Free Verse Editions, 2023), And Scuttle My Balloon (with Flower Conroy, Pictureshow Press 2025) and her translation from the Dutch of Lucas Hirsch’s Wu Wei Eats an Egg (Ben Yehuda Press 2025). Chapbooks include Slippery Surfaces (Finishing Line Press), And Haunt the World (with co-author Flower Conroy, Ghost City Press). and Dear Ghost (winner Harbor Review Editor’s prize). Her poems appear in Poem-a-day, Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She’s an emeritus professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. She gets restless. Find her at donnasmetz.com.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
One other thing that poetry demands from me is that I wrestle with what is Holy—we are, after all, ‘God wrestlers’, are we not? I have tried to duck out on this so many times, sometimes because people outside of my particular tiny wedge of the Jewish community didn’t resonate with it, and sometimes because it is just, well, hard. But I finally had to turn and face it. When I write, I am in conversation (sometimes adversarial, sometimes plaintive, sometimes grudging, sometimes open and free and present, but always longingly) with God—or the Goddess—with the Shekhinah. Whether I like it or not. And their visits come when they come, and the only thing I can do is try to keep myself fit for it, present as a poet. For me, this is a hard task. I am imminently distractible. I so admire poets like Ada Limón—she really knows how to keep herself present. I am a somnambulist reconstructing family, I am a new-fangled metaphysician trying to enter my faith fully, on my own terms. And I am so grateful for the Yetzirah community.
Published Works
- To Phrase a Prayer for Peace (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025)
- General Release from the Beginning of the World (Free Verse Editions, January 1 2023)
- And Scuttle My Balloon, a collaborative book with Flower Conroy (Picture Show Books, 2025)
- Wu Wei Eats an Egg, by Lucas Hirsch, translated from the Dutch by Donna Spruijt-Metz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025)
- Dear Ghost (Harbor Review Chapbooks, 2023)
- And Haunt the World, a collaborative microchap with Flower Conroy (Ghost City Press, 2021)
- Slippery Surfaces (Finishing Line Press, April 2019)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
Video Reading
Education
Otis College of Art and Design
Royal Conservatory Den Haag
California Institute of the Arts
University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam