Thom Tammaro

Thom Tammaro was born and raised in the heart of the steel valley of western Pennsylvania. His poems, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, among them American Poetry Review, The Bloomsbury Review, Chicago Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, College Composition and Communication, The Emily Dickinson Journal, Great River Review, Italian Americana, Midwest Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, South Dakota Review, Spoon River Quarterly, The Sun, University of Windsor Review, and VIA: Voices in Italian Americana.

He is the author of three full-length collections of poems, 23 Poems, Holding on for Dear Life and When the Italians Came to My Home Town, a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award; and two chapbooks, 31 Mornings in December and Minnesota Suite. He is also the co-editor of To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present (2006), recipient of the 2007 Midwest Booksellers’ Honor Award for Poetry, and the 2007 WILLA Award for Poetry from the Women Writing the West Association.

He also co-edited Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (2011); Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost (2005); Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman (2003), a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award; and Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson (2000), winner of a Minnesota Book Award, all published by the University of Iowa Press.

Other co-edited anthologies include Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest and Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest, both published by the University of Minnesota Press, and both winners of Minnesota Book Awards. He has also edited Remembering James Wright by Robert Bly (1991) and Roving Across Fields: A Conversation with William Stafford and Uncollected Poems 1942-1982 (1983).

Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan, was published in 2018.