Olena Kalytiak Davis
American poet Olena Kalytiak Davis was born in 1963. She is the author of two poetry collections: 'And Her Soul Out Of Nothing' and 'Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, And Other Off-And-Back Handed Importunities.'
Her first book won the Brittingham Prize. Her other honors include a a 1996 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award in poetry, and a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry.
Her poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including AGNI, Field, Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, Post Road Magazine and in anthologies including 'Best American Poetry 1995' and 'Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century.'
She is a first-generation Ukrainian-American, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She has since lived in Chicago, Lviv, Paris, Prague, San Francisco and the Yup'ik community of Bethel, Alaska, and she currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
She was educated at Wayne State University, University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a contributing editor at 'The Alaska Quarterly Review.'
“When it's this windy doesn't it seem impossibleto grow old?”
“did I mention my first kiss was extracted by someone who never should have been that lucky?”
“The situation is grave: the way we lean over each other, the way years later we emerge: hunchbacked, hooded, with full grown tender things called souls.”
“O, to be stung by an errant bee. O, to sting.O, to see you again. Covered in spring.”