David Graham

Poet

The power of the written word was promoted at Ripon College for 29 years by Professor of English and poet David Graham.

He was born Feb. 28, 1953, in Johnstown, New York. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a master of fine arts in poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

After teaching literature and writing at several schools, he spent most of his career at Ripon. He served as chair of the Department of English, writing coordinator, faculty advisor to Parallax and director of the Visiting Writers Series for 28 years. He received the May Bumby Severy, Class of 1908, Award for excellence in teaching.

He also served on the advisory board for Verse Wisconsin; Poets’ Prize selection committee; board of directors of the Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake; and Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission.

He has published seven collections of poetry, two anthologies, and poems, essays and reviews in a wide variety of anthologies and journals, both in print and online. He also has given numerous presentations and readings in many states.

Graham has been poetry editor for Blue Moon Review and poet-in-residence at the Frost Place, in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he also taught workshops. He now is a contributing editor for the online journal Verse-Virtual with his regular column “Poetic License,” on poetry and poets.

For many years, Graham wrote a complete new poem — or more — every day. One of his poems, “On the Eve of My Mother’s Surgery” from Graham’s 2000 book “Stutter Monk,” was read on Garrison Keillor’s nationally syndicated daily radio show “The Writer’s Almanac.”

In an address given at Ripon College, Graham said, “To a large degree, we educators are privileged participants in what I will call, stealing the term from 17th-century chemist Robert Boyle, ‘the Invisible College’ — which is that larger community of learners transcending institutional affiliation and not defined by paychecks or prizes. At our best, we are all enrolled in the Invisible College, where what is freely given tends to return many times over, and — best of all — where you don’t ever have to graduate.

“For me, poetry has been a main way of staying enrolled in this other college.”

Graham’s legacy endures at Ripon College through a poem installation on the Ceresco Prairie Conservancy, “Sky’s All the Surprise.”

After retiring from Ripon in 2016 as professor of English and the Helen Swift Neilson Professor of Cultural Studies, Graham and his wife, Lee A. Shippey, an artist and a former employee of Ripon College, moved back to his native upstate New York. He maintains a website at davidgrahampoet.com.