Chris Hosea

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, poet, editor, and curator Chris Hosea earned a BA at Harvard College and an MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hosea is the author of the poetry collections Double Zero (2016) and Put Your Hands In (2014).

In his poems, Hosea traces the drift of language lifted from social and personal sources. In a 2011 interview with Rob Crawford for the Best American Poetry blog, Hosea states, “In general the work that I’ve been doing, recently at least, is drawing more from a tradition of collage and the visual arts and poets who work using collage so that there are unexpected breaks between pieces of the poem, a lot of leaps that the reader needs to make, and hopefully that’s enjoyable. I think the aim of it is to be pleasure, of some kind.” On awarding the 2013 Walt Whitman Prize from the Academy of American Poets to Hosea’s Put Your Hands In, poet John Ashbery describes Hosea’s work as “transfixed in mid-paroxysm,” observing, “One feels plunged in a wave of happening that is about to crest.”

With poet Cecily Iddings, Hosea founded and edited The Blue Letter, a free, direct-mail poetry newsletter with original work by Lisa Robertson, Graham Foust, Rusty Morrison, and other poets. Hosea’s work as an art curator includes Ode to Street Hassle (2012, BronxArtSpace), an exhibition of contemporary paintings and photography featuring Zoe Leonard, Kim Bennett, Kimi Hodges, and other artists.

Hosea lives in Brooklyn and works as an advertising copywriter.