Prageeta Sharma

Poet Prageeta Sharma was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her parents emigrated from India in 1969, and Sharma was raised a Hindu. She has acknowledged the influence of her parents’ religion on her poetry: “I was taught to honor knowledge and books like a religion and so for me poetry keeps this relationship close, true, active,” she told the journal Willow Springs. Sharma attended Simon’s Rock College of Bard as an undergraduate and earned her MFA from Brown University and an MA in media studies from The New School. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill (2000), The Opening Question (2004), which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes (2007), Undergloom (2013), and Grief Sequence (2019). Sharma has spoken of her work in terms of thought rather than narrative. In Willow Springs, she noted, “It’s important to explore a variety of cognitive experiences in the poem rather than just telling a story.”
 
Sharma’s honors and awards include a Howard Foundation Award. She has taught at the New School, Goddard College, and the University of Montana-Missoula. She is the Henry G. Lee professor of English at Pomona College as well as the founder and president of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, and Literary Studies.