Eugene Gloria

A Filipino American Poet

Eugene Gloria is the author of four books of poems--Sightseer in This Killing City (Penguin Random House, 2019), winner of an Indiana Authors Award; My Favorite Warlord (Penguin, 2012), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Hoodlum Birds (Penguin, 2006), and Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin, 2000), a National Poetry Series selection and recipient of the Asian American Literary Award. His honors include a Fulbright Research Grant, a Pushcart Prize, a Poetry Society of America Award, and a Fulbright Senior Visiting Fellowship, among others. He has also received fellowships for residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Montalvo Arts Center, Willapa Bay AiR, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, VCCA at Le Moulin à Nef (France), Fundación Valparaíso (Spain), Château de Lavigny (Switzerland), Willapa Bay AiR, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale Foundation. He is the chair of the English Department and a professor of Creative Writing at DePauw University.

Photographer: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

Works


Sightseer in This Killing City


Winner of the Indiana Authors Award in Poetry

“Empires crumble and the dust continues to contaminate the land, the air, our bodies, and our conscience. What a blessing to have Eugene Gloria help us reckon with the troubled histories that shape America, the Philippines, and every point in between. If the broken world had a musical score, it would thunder like the disquieting poems in Sightseer in This Killing City.“


– Rigoberto González


“These fast-paced narratives are cacophonous and unsettling. But first and foremost, they are tales that praise ordinary people. Their stories sing out to the reader with heart-rending vividness. This book is a rough and sleepless journey told by a tourist who keeps arriving at a Goon Republic but never stays. A fascinating read.”


– Marilyn Chin


“Considered, beautiful and nimble. . . In [Sightseer in This Killing City], there is an exquisite, erudite, yet plain-spoken care with language from a poet well-read across continents and centuries . . . It is a continuing pleasure to dwell in the worlds, and work, that [Gloria] has wrought.”


– Anisfield-Wolf.org


“Gloria employs a fastidious agglomeration by, for example, drawing together postmodern Spanish architecture, nineteenth-century French poetry, 1970s English rock, and everlasting Portuguese longing, all in a single poem! . . . A seriously outstanding collection.”


– Booklist


“In the tradition of Whitman and the Beats, Gloria’s ‘discourse of bleeding utterances’ memorably charts cities, countries, and his own family.”


– Publishers Weekly

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My Favorite Warlord


Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

“Gloria establishes himself as a poet of memory, of masculinity, as well as of Asian American political identity…. His formal resourcefulness and his attention to manhood, its symbols, its troubles, place him in the company of Bruce Smith, though his work will also, and rightly, find another niche among other Asian American writers; Gloria sets himself confidently against injustice, in favor of inquiry, amid the eclectic language of contemporary scenes.”


 – Publishers Weekly (June 25, 2012)


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Hoodlum Birds


“Eugene Gloria spins the elegant, elegiac songs of a longtime traveler, moving through vast, painterly landscapes, among the deep spirits of exile and all that hovers just out-of-reach for every border-crosser. There’s a keen sense of fleeting presence on this earth coupled with quick insight for clues along the path–a darting, deep eye turned to rich detail and melancholy, and the startling possibilities of linkage that meandering brings. His gift is breathtaking.”


– Naomi Shihab Nye



“Gloria gets better and better. His new work practices a profound care for the particulars of an individual life and the world at large, integrating the values of philosophical inquiry, reverie, and imagination. Poem after poem enacts a yearning for wilder and deeper sense of human belonging, using language that has all the luminosity and intensity of a spiritual pilgrimage, and the melancholy of racial, cultural, and spiritual alienation. These elegant, intelligent, and passionate poems hurt and reward us.”


– Li-Young Lee



“Gloria’s new book demonstrates a central quality of poetry: the power to hear harmonies beyond the obvious ones, finding new undertones of meaning…Gloria brings the historical and contemporary into fresh, vivid, relation.”


– Robert Pinsky, The Washington Post

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Drivers at the Short-Time Motel


A National Poetry Series Selection

“Eugene Gloria’s Drivers at the Short-Time Motel is propelled by an imagistic sincerity and paced lyricism. Each poem seems to embody the plain-spoken as well as the embellishments that we associate with classical and modern Asian poetry…Though many of the poems address the lingering hurt of cultural and economic imperialism, worlds coexist in the same skin through magical imagery. Gauged by a keen eye, history is scrutinized, but through a playful exactness. These wonderful poems are trustworthy.”


– Yusef Komunyaaka



“Eugene Gloria’s luminous poems explore the complexities of history, of being both Filipino and American, as well as what it means to be husband, lover, brother, son, and poet. A keen intelligence, a musical ear, and a generous soul are at work here. Gloria’s powerful images are evoked with an eye for sensual, plain-spoken beauty. Drivers at the Short-Time Motel is a wonderful achievement.”


– Jessica Hagedorn



“Eugene Gloria has built a rich poetry out of family memoir, out of sojourns and residencias in Filipino transnational culture, all with captivating, deliberately mythopoeic perspective. He has become unique as a poet, possessing the emotional depth and writerly patience to both describe a landscape and explain a globalized, postcolonial perspective on horror, poverty, splendor, and diaspora. His Drivers at the Short-Time Motel brings us poems of real emotional weight and richness blessed with attractive tone of mystery and romance, yet abundant in realistic detail, finely wrought images, and a clean, sharply defined lineational style. As powerful as his subjects are, he handles them all with delicate, folkloric, and appreciative touch full of craft and traditional poetic discipline.”


– Garrett Hongo


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Recent Publications


"Brass in Pocket," "Schooled," and "My Mother Never Bore the Scar" (Poems), Boston Review, May 2024 Issue



"Red Hens and Raymundo" (Poem), New England Review, September 2022 Issue


"Rizal Upon Hearing David Bowie's 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'" (Poem), POETRY, October 2022 Issue


"Orange Land" and "At the PX" (Poems), Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 2022 Issue)


"The Cicadas Are Really Loud" (Poem), The Common (Issue 25, Spring 2023)

Recent and Upcoming
Events


Residency at the Corporation of Yaddo

June-July 2023


The Poetry Group: An Evening with Eugene Gloria (Virtual, Special Event), Reed Room at the Lake Forest Public Library, Lake Forest, Illinois and via Zoom
Monday, October 17, 2022, 7:00-8:30 PM
For details and registration, please email: lakeforestlibrary.org or call (847) 234-0636

Poetry Reading at the Carmel Clay Public Library, Indianapolis, Indiana
Saturday, December 10, 2022, 2:00 PM
For details call (317) 814-3940

GRANFALLOON: A Kurt Vonnegut Convergence and Reading by Indiana Authors Award Winners
Monroe County Public Library, 303 E. Kirkwood Ave.
June 1, 2022 at 7:30 p.m.


Family Affair: A Generative Workshop
Indiana State Library in Indianapolis,
Saturday, April 23, 2022
As part of Gathering of Writers Annual Writing Conference.


MacDowell Residency 2021


Poetry Reading at Franklin College
Carlson-Stauffer Visiting Writers Series Franklin, IN

7:00 PM, Thursday, September 23, 2021


Miami of Ohio

Low-Res MFA Summer 2021 Residency: Lecture via Zoom on "The True Narrative: A Craft Talk on Associative Leaps" and Poetry Reading on July 25, 2021


Brick Street Poetry, Inc, Reading 

SullivanMunce Cultural Center Museum

205 W. Hawthorne St.

Zionsville, IN 46077

7:00 PM, Thursday, July 1, 2021


Kelly Writers Series at DePauw University, Writing Program Faculty Reading, Peeler Arts Center Auditorium, Greencastle, IN. Wednesday, February 26, 2020, 7:30 PM


Poetry reading and panel discussion, “Empire and After: Five Filipino American Writers, Colonialism, and Art,” featuring Eugene Gloria, Marianne Chan, Oliver de la Paz, Jan-Henry Gray, and Michelle Peñaloza. Split This Rock Poetry Festival, George Washington University, Cloyd Heck Marvin Center 413. Friday, March 27, 2020, 3:30–5:00pm [Canceled due to COVID-19]


Kundiman Midwest Confluence Poetry Reading at Subterranean Books, 6275 Delmar, St. Louis, MO, Thursday, October 17, 2019, 7:00 PM


Featured Author at the Fifth Filipino American International Book Festival on October 11-13, 2019 at the San Francisco Public Library (Main Branch).


Kelly Writers Series Reading at DePauw University, Peeler Arts Center Auditorium, Greencastle, IN, Wednesday, September 18, 2019, 7:30 PM

Poets House Showcase Reading on August 1, 2019 at 7:00 PM

Honors


Residencies:


Fellowship, The Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, June-July 2023


Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, November, 2021


Fellowship, Fundación Valparaíso, Mojácar, Spain, July 1-July 14, 2022


Fellowship, VCCA-France, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts International, Le Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France, October, 2021

Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL, April 26-May 7, 2021


Fellowship, VCCA-France, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts International, Le Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France, August 2020 [Postponed]

Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL, July, 2016


Fellowship, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, CA, August 4 to September 2, 2015


Fellowship, Willapa Bay AiR, Oysterville, WA, June 1 -June 27, 2015 and June 1-June 28, 2018


Fellowship, VCCA-France, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts International, Le Moulin a Nef in Auvillar, France, September 23 to October 24, 2013


Fellowship, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA, June 4-July 15, 2012


Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Amherst, VA, June 17-July 17, 2011


Fellowship, Anderson Center, Red Wing, Minnesota, June 1-15, 2011


Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL, 2010, 2016, and 2021


Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, June-July, 2010


Sightseer in This Killing City Winner of the Indiana Authors Award


John Rabb Emison Professor of Creative and Performing Arts, 2019-2024


DePauw University Martha C. Rieth Faculty Fellowship, 2017–2020


Fulbright Scholar Grant, 2016–2017: Hosted by the Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies, The Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines (UST)


Arts & Sciences Distinguished Visiting Writer, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, spring 2013


DePauw University Edwin L. Minar Jr. Scholarship Award, 2013


DePauw University Martha C. Rieth Faculty Fellowship, 2012–2015


Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 2013


Pushcart Prize, 2003


Asian American Literary Award, 2001


National Poetry Series Open Competition (selected by Yusef Komunyakaa), 1999


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