Dennis Nurkse

Dennis Nurkse is an American poet from Brooklyn. He is the author of twelve poetry collections. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement (UK), translated into a dozen languages, and featured at the Jaipur International Literary Festival (India) and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (UK).

In human rights work, Nurkse was a founding member of Amnesty International USA Group 9 in 1973 and coordinated volunteer campaigns on repression and antisemitism in Argentina. He was the author of At Special Risk: The Impact of Political Violence on Minors in Haiti (Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, 1992). In 2007, Nurkse was elected to a term on the board of directors of Amnesty International-USA.

Life Nurkse is the son of the eminent Estonian economist Ragnar Nurkse. He graduated from Harvard College. In June 1996, he was named Brooklyn Poet Laureate. He has taught workshops at Rikers Island, and his poems about prison life appeared in The American Poetry Review, Evergreen Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, The Kenyon Review, and other magazines. He has taught at The New School University and Columbia University, and is currently on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He has translated anonymous medieval and flamenco Spanish lyric poems and has written about the Spanish pastoral poems by contemporary Giannina Braschi. His work has appeared in The Evergreen Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Ploughshares, The Paris Review. His subjects have included mental health, trauma, and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Honors and awards 2007 Guggenheim Fellow Pushcart Prize, 2020, 2022, 2023 Shortlisted for Forward Prize for best poetry collection published in the UK, 2011 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2009 Charles Angoff Prize, Literary Review, 2004 Frederick Bock Prize, The Modern Poetry Foundation, 2003 Tanne Foundation Fellowship, 2000 Brooklyn Poet Laureate 1996-2000 1990 Whiting Award Bess Hokin Prize, Modern Poetry Foundation, 1988 NEA fellowship NYFA fellowships