Nightboat Books mourns the passing of our author and founding advisory board member Michael Burkard, who died on December 23, 2024, at the age of 77. Burkard was the author of several books of poetry, including two from Nightboat: lucky coat anywhere (2011) and Envelope of Night: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1966–1990 (2008). His other collections include Unsleeping (2001), Pennsylvania Collection Agency (2001), Entire Dilemma (1998), My Secret Boat (1990), Fictions from the Self (1980), and Ruby for Grief (1982). He was the recipient of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award and the Whiting Writers’ Award, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Foundation for the Arts. He taught for many years at Syracuse University. Nightboat President Kazim Ali remembers that “Michael was an original, what people call a ‘poet’s poet.’ He was so present in life–his poems weren’t ‘artful,’ they were real living art. It was Jean Valentine who first told me to read Michael Burkard, and I have been his reader ever since.”
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