Rachel Levitsky was the 2008–2009 CPCW Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice. Levitsky is a practitioner of a hybrid form of poetry, one that frequently and freely crosses the boundaries of verse and prose, imagination and critique, story and polemic. In addition to her book-length poem Under the Sun, published by Futurepoem in 2003, she is the author of five chapbooks of poetry, Dearly (a+bend, 1999), Dearly 356, Cartographies of Error (Leroy, 1999), The Adventures of Yaya and Grace (PotesPoets, 1999) and 2(1x1)Portraits (Baksun, 1998). Her second full-length volume, another serial work, is called Neighbor, published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2009. Levitsky writes poetry plays, three of which (one with Camille Roy) have been performed in New York and San Francisco. Her work is published in magazines such as The Recluse, Sentence, Fence, The Brooklyn Rail, Global City, The Hat, Skanky Possum, Lungfull! and the anthologies Boog City (vol. I & II), Bowery Women, and 19 Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology. Her work was translated into Icelandic for the anthology 131.839 Slög Med Bilum by poet Eiríkur Örn Nordahl and into Japanese for the Tokyo Poetry Festival Anthology by poet Kyung-Mi Park. Online poetry and critical essays can be found on such sites as Narrativity, Duration Press, How2, and Web Conjunctions. She has taught poetry workshops at Woodland Pattern, Naropa University, Poets House, the Poetry Project and Pratt Institute. Levitsky is also the founder and codirector of Belladonna*, an event and publication series she began in 1999 in order to explore and advance feminist avant-garde poetics. Now in its tenth year, Belladonna* has hosted around 150 women and men whose writing is formally adventurous and politically engaged.
Photo: Rachel Levitsky at Kelly Writers House.