Suzanne Noguere
Suzanne Noguere was born in Brooklyn; when she was four, her family moved to Long
Island and ten years later to Florida. She says, "Growing up in an urban and suburban
environment, I was slow to realize that the universe is not human. It’s normal for us
to take for granted the givens of life—sky, earth, trees, birds, sun, our own
corporeal being and senses—but each of these things is immense in itself. The deepest
motive of my poetry is to explore the elemental state of being alive. Biology and natural
history are compelling to me."
After high school, Noguere returned to New York to attend Barnard College, graduating in
three years, magna cum laude, with honors in philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa. She has lived in
New York ever since. "I love living in New York. All the peoples of the world pass in
and out of your consciousness here as naturally as air in and out of your lungs. They
become part of your identity. Almost every culture has its living embodiments on the
street and its history in the museums."
Over the years, Noguere’s poems have appeared in many journals, among them The
Nation, Poetry, The Literary Review, Jazz, Sparrow, and The
Classical Outlook, as well as in four anthologies. She has won the Gertrude B. Claytor
Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America (1989) and the "Discovery"/The
Nation Prize (1996). Her first book of poems, Whirling Round the Sun (Midmarch Arts
Press), appeared in 1996. Noguere is also the author of two children’s books, Little
Koala, with Tony Chen, and Little Raccoon (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979 and
1981).
She collaborated with artist Miriam Adams in creating "Leaf Lines," a series of
30 artworks modeled on the interaction of text and image in Chinese art, which was
exhibited in Provincetown, Mass. in 1998.
She has also collaborated with James V. Hatch in writing The Stone House, A Blues
Legend, a novel about a girl becoming a poet, published in a deluxe limited art
edition with illustrations by Camille Billops (Hatch-Billops Collection, Inc., 2000).
Their theatrical adaptation of the book, titled Klub Ka, The Blues Legend, will be
given a full stage production at the University of Iowa, November 14–23, 2002.
Suzanne Noguere writes:
"Poetry is at the center of my engagement with the world. As a reader, what I want
from poetry is nourishment, intensity, and intimacy. The nourishment can be bitter, the
intensity can be quiet, the intimacy can be the poet’s unique perspective. And under
the voice of the poet speaking to the reader, I want to hear the language talking to
itself."
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