Mark Zimmermann

Mark Zimmermann’s first full-length poetry collection is Impersonations (Pebblebrook Press, 2015). His book, recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, is comprised of first-person poems narrated by a varied cast of literary characters, historical figures, and authors, such as Sir John Falstaff, Grigory Rasputin, Lady Diana, Emily Dickinson, and Lady Gaga. All poems in the book are written in a form, the lipogram, in which letters of the alphabet are deliberately excluded from a work. Critic Lewis Turco has said of Impersonations: “I wish I’d had Mark Zimmermann’s poems when I was putting together the last edition of The Book of Forms—I would certainly have used one and included the form. Zimmermann has wit, a great deal of talent as a writer, a fine ear for the language, and the discipline that a poet needs to go with these ingredients.”
 
Zimmermann’s poetry has also been published in New Letters, Cream City Review, Verse Wisconsin, New Verse News, Wisconsin Review, The Writer, Vocabula Review, and elsewhere. His prose has appeared in The Asahi Evening News, International Herald Tribune Asahi, The Daily Yomiuri, The Budapest Sun, Vocabula Review, Verse Wisconsin, and other publications. 
 
Zimmermann earned his BA and MA from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Since 2004, he has taught writing and humanities courses at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and he was awarded the Johnson Controls Award for Teaching Excellence in 2013. He taught at Ibaraki University in Mito, Japan, from 1993 to 2001. He serves on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and is a member of the Hartford Avenue Poets. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife Carole.