Vijay Seshadri

Seshadri’s poetry is marked by a willingness to press language against the limits of memory, history, and personal experience. His poems balance wit and gravity, compassion and remorseless clarity, moving between the intimate and the cosmic in search of what he calls “the emotional reality … that makes the poem a poem.”²

Born in Bangalore and raised in Ohio, Seshadri has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American poetry. He has authored five collections of poetry, including The Long Meadow, which won the James Laughlin Award, 3 Sections, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and That Was Now, This Is Then. A former editor at The New Yorker, he now teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

² “This Was Then, That Was Now: An Interview with Poet Vijay Seshadri,” Green Mountain Review