Professor of English
BFA, Emerson College; MFA, University of Pittsburgh; PhD, University of Nebraska
Email: eahl@plymouth.edu
Blog/Website: Liz Ahl Poetry
Office: Ellen Reed 5
Phone: 603-535-2595
Liz Ahl grew up an itinerant Navy brat, attending three different high schools and graduating from George Dewey High School at the Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines. She started writing poetry as a young person, often inspired by being a stranger in a new place. Her wandering ways (and her pursuit of higher education in creative writing) took her to Boston, Pittsburgh, and Lincoln, Nebraska. Then she found her way to Plymouth in the fall of 2001, and she’s been here ever since. She has traveled to all fifty states, as well as to Canada, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, and Laos, but never “across the pond” to the UK or Europe. Although her primary field is poetry, she is also interested in how poetry intersects with other areas, ranging from mathematics to history and science, as well as with the other fine and performing arts. She has performed her poetry with musicians, had her poems set for choral performance, and has recently had her first experience co-curating a gallery show pairing poets and printmakers. You might also ask her about the U.S. space program of the 1960s, letterpress printing and book arts, or Texas Hold ‘em, three passions of hers about which she’s also written poems.
Publications in Poetry
Book
Beating the Bounds (poems), Hobblebush Books (Granite State Poetry Series), 2017
Chapbooks
Song and Scar (No Chair Press, forthcoming in 2019)
Home Economics (Seven Kitchens Press, 2016)
Talking About The Weather (Limited Edition, Seven Kitchens Press, 2012)
Luck (Pecan Grove Press, 2010)
A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, winner of the 2008 Slapering Hol poetry chapbook prize,
published in 2008 by Slapering Hol Press
Reviewed in Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Summer 2009:
http://nancywhitepoetry.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/chapbooks-a-world-in-your-pocket/
Reviewed in The Women’s Review of Books, March/April 2009
Literary Journals and Anthologies (recent/selected)
“Dylan Plugs in at Newport,” in Visiting Bob (Anthology, New Rivers Press, 2018)
“Hunger,” in Barrelhouse Online feature “Tribute to Anthony Bourdain,” September 2018
https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/2018/8/20/hunger
“Water on the Moon,” Slipstream, No. 38, Fall 2018
“Man Walks 20 Miles to First Day of Work, CEO Gifts Him Car as Thanks,” in The New Verse
News, July 19, 2018
https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2018/07/man-walks-20-miles-to-first-day-of-work.html
“When She Comes Home From Camp,” Lavender Review, June 2018
http://www.lavrev.net/2018/06/liz-ahl.html
“Rift,” “Shearing,” “Ultrasound,” “Extraction,” and “Home from Traveling,” in Sinister
Wisdom (No. 106), Fall, 2017
“Playing Poker While Female,” Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology
of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2017)
“Artists at the Mint Bar,” Double Kiss: Contemporary Writers on the Art of Billiards
(Anthology, Mammoth Books, 2017)
“Bodies of Evidence,” in What Rough Beast, an online project of Indolent Books,
September 5, 2017
http://www.indolentbooks.com/what-rough-beast-poem-for-september-5-2017/
“Evangelical Pastors Lay Hands On Donald Trump In The Oval Office, July 12, 2017,” in
What Rough Beast, an online project of Indolent Books, September 17, 2017
http://www.indolentbooks.com/what-rough-beast-poem-for-september-17-2017/
“Ortho” in The Good Men Project, August 2017
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/chb-ortho/
“My Father’s Tools,” in The Good Men Project, June 2017
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/chb-my-fathers-tools/
“Beating the Bounds,” Nimrod (Vol 59, No 2), Spring/Summer 2017
“Defending the Constitution,” featured poem in What Rough Beast, an online project of
Indolent Books, April 28, 2017
http://www.indolentbooks.com/what-rough-beast-poem-for-april-28-2017/
“Fake Ghazal,” featured poem in What Rough Beast, an online project of Indolent Books,
March 6, 2017
http://www.indolentbooks.com/what-rough-beast-poem-for-march-6-2017/
“Others Carried Milk,” in If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American
Inauguration, (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017)
“Electric Homework” and “Eavesdropping on the Environmental Biologists,” in This
Assignment is So Gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art Teaching (Sibling Rivalry Press,
2013)
Selected Recent Presentations/Collaborations
“Women from Away,” Reading/Panel participant, New Hampshire Poetry Festival,
September 2017
Co-Curator and Contributor, “Finding Place on Paper: Contemporary Poets and Printmakers
Explore the White Mountains,” at the Museum of the White Mountains, October-
“Sediments, Sequences and Solitude: Artworks and Poetry from 2011-2015 Playa Artists in
Residence,” Hallie Brown Ford Gallery, Umpqua Valley Arts Association, Roseburg,
OR, Jan 15-March 11, 2016; Atelier 6000, Bend, OR, April 1-30, 3016; World Forestry Center, Portland, OR, July 28-Sep 25, 2016. (Poem: “Playa,” included in show and in catalogue)
“Four Weddings and an Inauguration: Occasional Poetry,” Panel moderator and participant,
AWP Conference (Minneapolis, MN), April 2015
“Collaboration and Convergence: Chapbooks at the Crossroads,” Panelist participant, AWP
Conference (Seattle, WA), March 2014
Interview with NHPR (March, 2018): http://www.nhpr.org/post/bookshelf-liz-ahl-life-new-hampshire-insider#stream/0
Artist Residency Programs
The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, April 2015
Playa Artist Residency Program, August-September, 2014 and January-February, 2015
Vermont Studio Center, July 2010
Jentel Artist Residency Program, Feb-March, 2008
Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, May 2008