The Next Editor of Poetry Magazine Is.... Don Share!!

The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce Don Share as the next editor of Poetry magazine. Share will begin his tenure July 1, 2013, as the magazine’s 12th editor in its 101-year history, following the departure of his longtime colleague, outgoing editor Christian Wiman.

Currently senior editor of the magazine, Share, 56, brings 25 years of experience in poetry and publishing, including editorial posts at the Partisan Review, Harvard Review, and Literary Imagination: The Review of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He served as the curator of poetry at Harvard University for seven years until 2007, when he joined Poetry magazine. During Share’s six-year tenure at Poetry working with Wiman, both the magazine and the magazine’s podcast have received National Magazine Awards.

After an extensive national search, Share was appointed editor by Poetry Foundation president John Barr. The board of the Poetry Foundation voted unanimously to ratify the appointment.

“Don Share's deep experience as editor, critic, poet, and scholar, as well as his fellowship with the entire poetry community, make him the perfect choice to lead Poetry into its second century,” said Barr.

Share plans to continue the illustrious heritage of Poetry while bringing new energy and initiatives to the magazine, including reaching more young readers and strengthening the conversation between the magazine and its audience, specifically through enhanced digital channels.

“Don Share represents significant change as well as continuity,” said incoming Poetry Foundation president Robert Polito. “I view Don as an editor in the tradition of Daryl Hine and Henry Rago, editors who rose from the editorial board to reinvent Poetry, as each new generation and new editor must do.”

Current Poetry editor Christian Wiman also offered high praise. “Don is a genius. He knows more about poetry than anyone I have ever met. My guess is that Poetry is about to be the best it’s been in a hundred years.”

Others in the poetry community are similarly enthusiastic about Share’s appointment.

“Don Share is not just an excellent poet, scholar, editor, and translator,” said poet and poetry blogger Ron Silliman, “he has also proven instrumental in the growth of the Poetry Foundation’s understanding of its mission over the past several years. He has helped make the entire organization responsive and open to the whole world of poetry. I can think of no editor better qualified to wade through the diversity of verse on behalf of readers everywhere.”

“Share’s knowledge and experience of poetry is unrivaled, in my estimation,” added poet Alice Fulton. “I can think of no one more deeply informed, no one who honors and respects a broader range of aesthetic traditions and endeavors, no one who has given more to poetry and poetics.”

Share has published 10 books, most recently Wishbone (Black Sparrow) and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions). In 2012, he co-edited The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine (University of Chicago Press) with Wiman. His translations of Miguel Hernandez were awarded the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize and were reissued by the New York Review of Books.

Share has a Ph.D. from Boston University’s Editorial Institute, an M.A. in poetry from Boston University, an M.S. in library and information science from Simmons College, and an A.B. from Brown University in religious studies. He is originally from Memphis, Tennessee.

“It is a great honor, and a greater responsibility, to continue the work of such marvelous editors as Harriet Monroe, Henry Rago, and Christian Wiman, who are my heroes and my inspiration,” said Share.