Matthew and Michael Dickman

Matthew Dickman

A remarkable young writer, Matthew Dickman won the APR/Honnickman First Book Prize for All-American Poem (2008), chosen by Tony Hoagland and published by Copper Canyon Press. A book of great hopefulness, gratitude, and praise, it plumbs the ecstatic nature of daily life, where pop culture and sacred longing go hand in hand. The work is expansive and intimate, rushing forth like a river, with a fluid unstoppable energy. Matthew Lippman praises it thus: “The language is a music, and one has to understand that when you jump into the poems they will take you places you could have never imagined.” Dorianne Laux says his poems are “Ravenous for life, for love, for forgiveness.”
His poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker and Tin House. He has received fellowships for his work from the Michener Center for Writers, the Vermont Studio Centers, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Matthew has been profiled in Poets & Writers and The New Yorker; with his twin brother, poet Michael Dickman. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Michael Dickman

Michael Dickman began writing poems “after accidentally reading a Neruda ode.” His first collection is The End of the West (2009) from Copper Canyon Press. A brilliant debut, his poetry breathes in the entire world, it’s delights, cruelty, boredom, and griefs, and breathes out a prayer, one that holds both grace and suffering, equally, lightly. “There is only this world and this world // What a relief / created // over and over.” Franz Wright calls him a young poetic genius with a “style like no one else’s” and elucidates, “With the utmost gravity as well as a kind of cosmic wit, Michael Dickman’s poems give a voice to the real life sorrows, horrors, and indomitable joys which bind together the vast human family.”