The Elliston Poet-in-Residence

The George Elliston Poetry Fund has fostered the development of promising young poets and honored the achievement of established poets since 1951. Each year, through the Poet-in-Residence Program, a distinguished poet comes to UC to give public lectures and readings, while conducting seminars and workshops with graduate writers. The Elliston Fund also supports a writers series that has brought Nobel Prize Laureates, U.S. and British Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and National Book Award winners– from early campus residencies by Robert Frost to more recently hosted Elliston Poets such as Laureate Tracy K. Smith and 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner Tyehimba Jess. Every reading has free and open to the public since the room's opening in 1951. 

Brian Teare: Poet-in-Residence for 2023

Brian Teare

A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Brian Teare is the author of six critically acclaimed books, including Companion Grasses, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and Doomstead Days, longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle, Kingsley Tufts, and Lambda Literary Awards. His most recent book is a reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (Ahsahta 2015/Nightboat 2022). He’s also published eight chapbooks, including Paradise Was Typeset, SORE EROS, and Headlands Quadrats. His honors include the Four Quartets Prize, Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards, and fellowships from the NEA, the Pew Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the MacDowell Colony.

After over a decade of teaching and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and eight years in Philadelphia, he’s now an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia. An editorial board member of Poetry Daily, he lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books. 


Elliston Poets, 1951 to Present

Recordings of the Elliston Poets poets can be found in the Elliston Digital Archive.
Year / Poet  
2022 Heid E. Erdrich  
1986 Marge Piercy
2021 Tyehimba Jess
1985 Richard Howard
2019 Mary Ruefle 1984 Jean Valentine
2018 Amit Majmudar 1983 Johh Silkin
2017 Denise Duhamel   1982 Thom Gunn
2016 Carl Phillips   1981 Carolyn Kizer
2015 Mary Szybist 1980 Michael Harper
2014 C. K. Williams 1979 John Ashbery
2013 Claudia Emerson 1978 Louise Gluck
2012 Terrance Hayes 1977 Philip Levine
2011 Albert Goldbarth   1976 Gary Snyder
2010 Alice Fulton 1975 William Stafford
2009 Lynn Emanuel 1974 Wendell Berry
2008 John Koethe 1973 Denise Levertov
2007 David St. John 1972 Robert Wallace
2006 Molly Peacock 1971 Louis Simpson
2005 Carl Dennis 1970 John Wain
2004 C. D. Wright 1969 John Hollander
2003 Linda Gregerson 1968 David Wagoner
2002 Henry Taylor 1967 Donald Justice
2001 Rodney Jones 1966 Donald Hall
2000 Jane Hirshfield 1965 Denis Donoghue
1999 Wyatt Prunty
1964 Daniel Hoffman
1998 Jay Wright 1963 Donald Davie
1997 Ellen Bryant Voigt 1962 John Press
1996 Dave Smith
1961 Richard Eberhart
1995 David Lehman  1960 David Daiches
1994 Marilyn Nelson 1959 Karl Shapiro
1993 Heather McHugh 1958 Randall Jarrell
1992 John Haines 1957 John Betjeman
1991 Jane Flanders 1956 Peter Viereck
1990 Alfred Corn 1955 Robert Frost  
1989 Marilyn Hacker 1954 Robert Lowell
1988 Gary Soto 1953 Stephen Spender
1987 Mary Oliver

1952 John Berryman

1951 Robert P. Tristam Coffin