Charles Fort is the author of six books of poetry and ten chapbooks including: The Town Clock Burning (St. Andrews Press)--We Did Not Fear the Father (Red Hen Press)--Darvil, Prose Poems Book 1 (St. Andrews Press)—We Did Not Fear the Father (Carnegie Mellon University Press, reprint, Contemporary Classic)--Frankenstein was a Negro, Prose Poems Book 2 (Backwaters Press)-- Mrs. Belladonna’s Supper Club Waltz, Book 3 (Backwaters Press) and appears in 45 anthologies and The Best American Poetry, 2001 (Rita Dove)—2003 (Yusef Komunyakaa)—2016 (Edward Hirsch). Fort is Distinguished Emeritus Endowed Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Founder of the Wendy Fort Foundation Theater of Fine Arts.
Poetry Honors and Awards: Yaddo Fellow 2019--MacDowell Fellow 1996--The Writer’s Voice Poetry Award “On Being Invisible” (For Ralph Ellison) Judge, Grace Paley, 1996--Individual Artist Award in Poetry Connecticut Commission on the Arts manuscript-in-progress Hollow Ground 1992--Poetry Society of America Mary Carolyn Davis Memorial Award “Born On A River” (For Poem Best Set To Music) 1990—Libretto “Born On A River” Commissioned Poem Thirty Piece Orchestra and Choir Wilmington, North Carolina's 250th Anniversary Thalian Hall 1989--Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize “The Writer At His Desk” Judge, Fred Chappell 1985.
Fort received the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Siena Heights University and Faculty Scholar Awards from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Southern Connecticut State University, and he is represented on the NC Literary Map: Fort...who founded the Creative writing program at UNC-Wilmington. Fort has completed 350 villanelles. His first novel is forthcoming: The Last Black Hippie in Connecticut.
No review can adequately praise the poetic and moral victory of this collection...the refusal to assume easy answers or to merely express hate, and the difficult, earned humility of “Race War” are testaments to Fort’s power’s as a poet...it is a speech-act of authenticity and integrity...I’m also struck here by how the poem’s allusion and borrowing form Tennyson work so naturally, the sonority of Fort’s language throughout this poem, and elsewhere in the collection is worthy of comparison to Tennyson.
- Ken Shedd, The Mid-American Review
