Photo Credit: Willa Kaufman

Elizabeth Jacobson

b. 1961

Current City, State, Country

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Birth City, State, Country

South Orange, New Jersey, USA

Biography

Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow.  Her most recent book, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, won the New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019), and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Her other books include Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books, 2012), two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? (2017) and A Brown Stone (2015), and the anthology, Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, Poetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic (2021), which she co-edited.

She is the founding director of the WingSpan Poetry Project, a not-for-profit which from 2013-2020 conducted weekly poetry classes in battered family and homeless shelters in New Mexico. As a co- founding director of Poetry Pollinators, Jacobson’s work continues in the community with this eco-poetry public art initiative dedicated to empowering poetry, art, education and the environment in support of declining native bee populations.  The first bee house, which displays a panel for a poem and an education panel, fully funded and supported by many local organizations, was installed by the Santa Fe River in June, 2022.

Her work has been supported with grants and residencies by many organizations including the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, New Mexico Arts, Academy of American Poets, Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Mable Dodge Luhan House and Herekeke.

Elizabeth is the Reviews Editor for the on-line literary journal Terrain.org. She curates a community reading series for Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts and teaches poetry workshops regularly in the community.

Published Works

Poetry
Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019)
Are the Children Make Believe? (chapbook; Dancing Girl Press, 2017)
A Brown Stone (chapbook; Dancing Girl Press, 2015)
Her Knees Pulled In, (Tres Chicas Books, 2012)

Edited Collection
Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, Poetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic (co-editor, Axle Contemporary Books, 2021)

Author Site

Links to Sample Works

Current Title

Reviews editor, Terrain.org; Co-founding director, Poetry Pollinators; Founding director, WingSpan Poetry Project; Poetry curator, Center for Contemporary Arts; Community educator

Education

Rollins College, Winter Park, FL, BA in English, 1983
Columbia University, NY, NY, MFA in Creative Writing, 1988

Subject Matter

Genre