David Wojahn is an acclaimed American poet, essayist, and educator whose work weaves personal memory with the larger currents of history and culture. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1953, he earned degrees from the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. His debut collection, Icehouse Lights, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and the William Carlos Williams Award, launching a career marked by critical acclaim and emotional depth. His later works—Interrogation Palace, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and World Tree, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize—cemented his reputation as one of America’s most powerful poetic voices. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, Wojahn is Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University and teaches in the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

This week on Authors Unbound, we talk with acclaimed poet and essayist David Wojahn about his new collection, Secret Addressee: Essays on How Poetry Matters, out this fall from Unbound Edition Press. In this powerful conversation, Wojahn reflects on poetry’s role in times of political upheaval and cultural uncertainty—how it both sustains us and resists easy consolation. He discusses the writers who shaped his thinking, from Yannis Ritsos to Elizabeth Bishop, and shares the intimate connection between his prose, his teaching, and his poetry. Wojahn also reads two striking new sonnets that mirror America’s shifting ideals across generations. 

Don’t miss this thoughtful and deeply felt discussion about art, conscience, and the enduring necessity of poetry.

This is David Wojahn Unbound.

Purchase your copy of Secret Addressee: Essays on How Poetry Matters on our website: https://www.unboundedition.com/product/addressee-david-wojahn-literary-nonfiction/