Philip Metres

Philip Metres (he/him) grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, the grandchild of Lebanese refugees and migrants and the descendent of Irish famine survivors. Metres has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.”

He is the author and translator of books and chapbooks including Fugitive/Refuge (Copper Canyon Press, 2024); Ochre & Rust: New Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (Green Linden Press, 2023); Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon Press, 2020); The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (University of Michigan Press, 2018), a finalist for a Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism; Pictures at an Exhibition (University of Akron Press, 2016), winner of an Akron Poetry Prize; Sand Opera (Alice James Books, 2015), an honorable mention for an Arab American Book Award; I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (co-translated by Dimitri Psurtsev; Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015), which was shortlisted for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and a Read Russia Prize; Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Poetic Texts of Lev Rubinstein (co-translated by Tatiana Tulchinsky; Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014), which was longlisted for a Best Translated Book Award; A Concordance of Leaves (Diode Editions, 2013), winner of an Arab American Book Award; abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine Press, 2011), winner of an Arab American Book Award; To See the Earth (Cleveland State University Press, 2008); and Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (University of Iowa Press, 2007).

He has won an Adrienne Rich Award; George W. Hunt, S.J. Prize; Cleveland Arts Prize; Anne Halley Poetry Prize; and Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work has been published in Best American Poetry along with numerous journals and anthologies, and he has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, PEN, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the Russian Institute for Literary Translation, and the Creative Workforce Fellowship. His poems have been translated into Arabic, Farsi, French, Polish, Russian, and Tamil.

Metres is a professor of English and the director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Program at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.