Christopher Bakken

Christopher Bakken (born 1967 in Madison, Wisconsin) an American poet, translator, chef, travel writer, and professor at Allegheny College.^[1]

He graduated from Columbia University with an M.F.A. and from University of Houston with a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing. He was a Fulbright Scholar in American Studies at the University of Bucharest in 2008.^[2] He is Director of Writing Workshops in Greece: Thessaloniki and Thasos.^[3]

His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Wall Street Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Parnassus, Raritan, Southwest Review, and Western Humanities Review.^[4] His first poetry collection, After Greece (2001), was published by Truman State University Press after he won the T. S. Eliot Prize.

His burger recipe won a Food & Wine contest.^[5]

• "Confession" The Missouri Review 2012
• "Some Things Along Strada C.A. Rosetti", Parnassus: Poetry in Review via Poetry Daily. 2009.
• "Portrait Detail, with Pear", AGNI 2006
• "Lesvos" Academy of American Poets 2016
• "Driving the Beast." Academy of American Poets 2017
• "Gorgona." Juxtaprose

Books

• Eternity & Oranges. Pitt Poetry Series, 2016. ISBN 978-0822964049
• Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table University of California Press, 2013, ISBN 0520275098
• Goat Funeral Sheep Meadow Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-931357-38-8
• After Greece Truman State University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-1-931112-00-0

Influences/Like Voices

• Constantine Cavafy
• Patrick Leigh Fermor
• James Merrill
• Yannis Ritsos
• Walt Whitman

• The Lions’ Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios, Translated Christopher Bakken, Roula Konsolaki, Truman State University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-931112-64-2

• Kindled Terraces: American Poets in Greece, Truman State University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-931112-37-1
• "Ohio Elegy", Poets against the War, Editors Sam Hamill, Sally Anderson, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003, ISBN 978-1-56025-539-0
• "Home Thoughts, from Abroad", Under the rock umbrella: contemporary American poets, 1951–1977, Editor William J. Walsh, Mercer University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-88146-047-6

• Review of Eternity & Oranges in The Literary Review
• Review of Eternity & Oranges at American Microreviews

If Bakken can, in the future, stay put in his resplendent Hellenic-inflected imagination for a good while, and avoid the art museum and his personal library, he may just write a book with the smell, taste, and texture of ambrosia. Goat Funeral isn’t quite that, but it’s not chopped liver, either.^[6]

• 2008 Fulbright Scholar: University of Bucharest
• 2005 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize
• 2006 Helen C. Smith Memorial Prize by the Texas Institute of Letters
• 2001 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for After Greece.

• Review of HONEY, OLIVES, OCTOPUS in Wall Street Journal
• Hunting for Octopus and Cooking for Michael Pollan
• "#3 – Christopher Bakken", First Book Interviews, October 13, 2008