LUCIAN MATTISON
POET
WRITER
EDITOR
Lucian Mattison's debut poetry collection, Peregrine Nation, won the 2014 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize from the Broadkill River Press, judged by Diane Lockward, Gerry LaFemina, and Larry Woiwode. For more information or to purchase, click here.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
“In semi-documentary dramatic scenes, Lucian Mattison tells stories about a specific locale, a peregrine nation that I can think my way into, or sink into—an outlier’s view of Argentina. His scenes remain in the mind because of each line of poetry, as Ezra Pound recommended, is written “at least as well as prose.” Mattison’s poetry masquerading as prose is generally straightforward but delivers sudden fillips that transpose the reader to another level. He is a scrupulous poet who will engage readers with his bright, spontaneous, clear, never-strained, uncluttered, new voice.”
- Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of North Dakota, author of Even Tide and Beyond the Bedroom Wall
The Nashville Review:
Moving Homes
The Adroit Journal:
Tooth
apt:
In Search of Sheep
Breakwater Review:
Ash Wednesday
Four Way Review:
Stick and Poke Tattoo
"Lucian Mattison, who has lived in Brazil and Chile takes on the role of a “New world vulture” observing the turbulent life around him. Knives, guns, riot police, and even earthquakes are common in the Santiago of his debut collection, but there is a sweetness and sensuality to be found there as well. If “English is a way out / tongue in which we celebrate what we leave,” Mattison’s poems give us a way into “culture of silence” he so skillfully describes and disturbs. Not since the publication of Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us more than 30 years ago has a poet written more compellingly about events that most Americans would prefer to ignore."- Sue Ellen Thompson, Editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry
DEBUT COLLECTION