James Galvin

Who is James Galvin?

James Galvin is an American poet. He has published six collections of poetry, most recently As Is, "X: Poems," and Resurrection Update, Collected Poems, 1975-1997 which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Poet’s Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book The Meadow and a novel, Fencing the Sky.

In 2005, Galvin along with Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, and Terry Tempest Williams was hailed in Mark Tredinnick's The Land's Wild Music in which Tredinnick analyzed how the landscape nourished and developed Galvin's writing.

For more than 30 years, Galvin has been crafting poems that convey a profound sense of place, capturing both the harshness and beauty of the rural American West. In particular he vividly reveals a western landscape, a homeland, that is often devastating and, seemingly, on the verge of blowing away Galvin’s vision and voice are ennobled by a profound sense of obligation to the hard-bitten survivors of this eroding landscape.