C. S. Giscombe

C. S. Giscombe (born 1950 Dayton, Ohio) is an African-American poet, essayist, and professor of English at University of California, Berkeley.^[1]

Life

A graduate of SUNY at Albany and Cornell University, he was editor of Epoch magazine in the 1970s and 1980s. He has taught at Cornell University, Syracuse University, Illinois State University, and Pennsylvania State University.^[2] As of 2015, he teaches at University of California, Berkeley.^[3]

His work has appeared in Callaloo,^[4] Chicago Review, Hambone, Iowa Review, Boundary 2, etc..

Giscombe has also worked as a taxi driver, a hospital orderly, and a railroad brakeman.^[5] He acknowledges his childhood fascination with trains as having an influence in his writing, noting that the railroad is "not sentimental...continuous...intimately connected to features of land and water." ^[6]

Awards

• 1998 Carl Sandburg Award for Giscome Road.
• 2008 American Book Award for Prairie Style ^[7]
• 2010 Stephen Henderson Award.

Works

• Border Towns. Dalkey Archive Press. 2016. ISBN 1564787656.
• Ohio Railroads. Omnidawn Press. 2014. ISBN 1890650749.
• Prairie Style. Dalkey Archive Press. 2008. ISBN 9781564785138.
• Inland. Leroy Chapbooks. 2001.
• Into and Out of Dislocation. Diane Publishing Co. 2001. ISBN 978-0-7567-6662-7. 
• Two Sections from "Practical Geography." Diæresis Press. 1999.
• Giscome Road. Dalkey Archive Press. 1998. ISBN 978-1-56478-184-0. 
• Here. Dalkey Archive Press. 1994. ISBN 978-1-56478-338-7. 
• At Large. St. Lazaire Press. 1989.
• Postcards. Ithaca House. 1977. ISBN 0878860894.

References

External links

• "Prairie Style: An interview with C.S. Giscombe", Poetry Foundation
• "C.S. Giscombe", Electronic Poetry Center
• "C.S. Giscombe", PennSound
• "Review of Giscome Road'" in Samizdat