Thom Donovan

Thom Donovan is a poet, editor, essayist, curator, and teacher. He is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Withdrawn (Compline, 2017) and The Hole (Displaced Press, 2012), as well as the multi-genre book, Withdrawn: a Discourse (Shifter, 2016), and ten chapbooks. His art writing and criticism have appeared in Afterall, Afterimage, Art21, ASAP/Journal, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, The Drawing Center, Hyperallergic, The Iowa Review, Kadist, Modern Painters, Performa, Performing Arts Journal, Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Poets.org (Academy of American Poets), Rethinking Marxism, SFMOMA, Shifter, and The Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, among other publications. Since 2008 he has been the co-editor and co-publisher of ON Contemporary Practice, an online journal and print monograph series for critical writings about one’s contemporaries. He co-edited Supple Science: a Robert Kocik Primer (with Michael Cross; ON Contemporary Practice, 2013) and To Look At The Sea Is To Become What One Is: An Etel Adnan Reader (with Brandon Shimoda; Nightboat Books, 2014). From 2010-2012 he edited the column “5 Questions for Contemporary Practice” at Art21, and since 2006 he has edited the weblog Wild Horses Of Fire. Since 2006 he has curated numerous event series, including The Multifarious Array (with Dorothea Lasky; 2011-2015), SEGUE Series (2008-2010), and PEACE ON A (2006-2008). He has also helped to organize numerous symposia including “In Search of African-American Space” at Pratt Institute (2016), “Somatics, Movement, and Writing” at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2011), and “Rereading Louis Zukofsky’s Bottom: on Shakespeare” at SUNY-Buffalo (2003). With Sreshta Rit Premnath/Shifter Magazine he organizes the Project For An Archive Of The Future Anterior. 

He has taught courses in poetics, visual art, critical theory, and writing at Columbia University, Parsons School of Design, Eugene Lang College, Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, Wesleyan University, Bard College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and NYU, and holds a Ph.D. in English from SUNY-Buffalo and a B.A. in English from Oberlin College. From 2011-2013 he served as Archive Manager for the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, and from 2006-2011 he archived the audio holdings of the Unterberg Poetry Center at 92Y. In 2013 he was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. His current projects include a book of poems and other writings based upon the compositions of Julius Eastman, a book of critical essays regarding poetics, political practice, and the occult, and an ongoing "ante-memoir" entitled Left Melancholy.