Wally SwistWally Swist is the author of over forty books and chapbooks of poetry and prose.Among his books, he has published The Daodejing: A New Interpretation, along with coauthors, David Breeden and Steven Schroeder (Beaumont, TX: Lamar University Press, 201). Also, his book Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love, was selected as the co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, which was chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who served as judge, and the book was published by Southern Illinois University Press, in 2012. The book was nominated for a National Book Award.Swist is the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize for A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems and Haiku Regarding Birds and Nature. The book was published in late 2019 by master printer and book designer Gabriel Rummonds, of Bainbridge Island, Washington.He has also published six books of poetry from Shanti Arts, LLC, of Brunswick, Maine, including Candling the Eggs (2016), The Map of Eternity (2018), The Bees of the Invisible (2019), Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), Awakening and Visitation (2020), and Taking Residence (2021).His books of nonfiction include Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2018) and On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (New York and Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2018). The latter book's eponymous essay On Beauty was the recipient of first prize in the Adelaide Books Literary Awards for the essay category, which was collected in Adelaide Literary Awards Anthology: Essays 2018 (New York and Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2019).Some of Swist's work has been set to music, including the poems Geese Landing and Swallows that were set to music for piano and soprano by Dr. Douglas Bruce Johnson. A performance of the music and the poems was held at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, where, for nearly a quarter century, Dr. Johnson was Associate Professor of Music.Other poetry that has been set to music includes The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind, which inspired a composition by the electroacoustic composer Dr. Elainie Lillios. The composition was performed by percussionist Scott Deal in Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 20, 2013. It is only one of several venues across the country where thecomposition has been performed. Dr. Elainie Lillios is Professor of Composition at Bowling Green State University.After Long Drought was also composed to an electroacoustical score written by Professor Elainie Lillios, and the composition was also premiered at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in June 2016 by percussionist Scott Deal.Swist is a recipient of Artist's Fellowships in poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1977 and 2003). He was also awarded a one-year writing residency (1998) and two back-to-back one-year writing residencies (2003-2005) at Fort Juniper, the Robert Francis Homestead, in Cushman, Massachusetts.His work has appeared in national periodicals such as Commonweal, The North American Review, Rattle, Rolling Stone, Your Impossible Voice, and Yankee Magazine.Swist makes his home in New England, where he is semi-retired and works as a freelance editor, writer, and researcher. Read More Read Less