Jack Collom

Who is Jack Collom?

Jack Collom is an American poet, teacher and essayist. His twenty-five books include Blue Heron & IBC, The Fox, Arguing with Something Plato Said, Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, Exchanges of Earth and Sky and Situation Sings. His latest book of poems, 'Second Nature', won the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. He has been anthologized in countless magazines and collections in the United States and abroad, from Best Poems of 1963 to The Best American Poetry 2004.

Named John Aldridge Collom by his parents, he was born in Chicago and grew up in the small town of Western Springs, Illinois, spending much of his time hiking and birding in nearby woods. He studied Forestry at Colorado A&M College, spent four years in the U.S. Air Force, then worked in factories for twenty years while writing poetry. In 1956 Jack married Edeltraud Maria Teresia Hopps in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. They moved to the United States in 1958, eventually settling in Boulder, Colorado. They had three sons; Nathaniel, Christopher, and Franz. They divorced in 1974, and Jack had a daughter, Sierra, through a second marriage, to Mara Meshak. He is currently married to writer and curator Jennifer Heath.