Denise Duhamel
June 2009
Denise
Duhamel’s most recent books are Ka-Ching!
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), Two and Two
(Pittsburgh, 2005), Mille et un Sentiments
(Firewheel, 2005); Queen for a Day: Selected and New
Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001); The Star-Spangled
Banner (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and Kinky (Orchises Press, 1997). A bilingual edition
of her poems, Afortunada de mí (Lucky Me),
translated into Spanish by Dagmar
Buchholz and David Gonzalez, came out in 2008 with Bartleby
Editores (Madrid.) A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she
is an associate professor at Florida International University in Miami.
* * *
I find that writing poetry is a way I argue with myself, have compassion for myself, go
back and forth about something, pick an issue apart and try to make sense of it which
might be called a “double-voiced discourse.”
But having said that, I’m also very interested in polyphonic poetry and
monologues in which the speaker is seemingly not me, the poet. Perhaps because of my early interest in spoken word
poetry (I spent a great deal of time at the Nuyorican Poets Café in the early
1990’s), I am very drawn to poetry that has a strong voice—a voice that seems to
want to be performed. I have had my poems
staged as plays at various venues in New York City and elsewhere, and students often use
my poems in forensics debates.
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