About

Larry Sawyer (US and Canadian) was a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. His books of poetry include The Blue Butterfly (Guernica, 2027); Daylight Hammer (mother’s milk press, 2021); Breaking Lorca (White Hole Press, 2014); Vertigo Diary (Blaze VOX, 2013); and Unable to Fully California (Otoliths Press, 2010), A Chaise Lounge in Hell (aboveground press, Ontario, Canada), among many others.

An extensive collection of his poetry and correspondence has been archived at Berkeley University’s Bancroft Library, as well, his poetry has been archived in libraries at Yale, University of Chicago, Ohio State University, UCLA, and in his hometown of Fairborn, Ohio, US.

He was the editor of milk magazine for 25 years featuring the work of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Gerard Malanga, Timothy Baum, Ira Cohen, Jack Hirschman, Bill Berkson, and many others, and, as the past editor of Nexus magazine he published Wanda Coleman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Paul Violi, and Frank Lima (among others).

Larry was curator of the well-known Myopic Books Poetry series in Chicago for 15 years (2005-2019) and when he moved to Toronto, immediately kicked off the milk magazine reading series at Type Books (2021-2024). He also taught poetry and served as the co-director of the Chicago School of Poetics, where visiting instructors included Pierre Joris, Eileen Myles, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman.

His work has been included in anthologies such as: Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017); Poem-A-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion (Academy of American Poets, 2015); A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration (DePaul Humanities Center Press, 2009); and The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2008).

A Chicago Reader readers’ poll awarded him “Best Poet” in Chicago (2012, 2013), and, in 2013, he was named by The Huffington Post as one of 200 Top Advocates for Poetry in America. His poetry appears in publications such as Action Yes, The Boston Review, The Chicago Tribune, Coconut, Court Green, Esque, Exquisite Corpse, MiPOesias, The Prague Literary Review, National Poetry Review, Poets & Artists Magazine, Rain Taxi, Shampoo, Skanky Possum, Van Gogh’s Ear, Vanitas, Verse Daily, and VLAK (edited by Edmund Berrigan and Louis Armand). He has read his work at venues such as the New York Public Library; the Chicago Printer’s Row Lit Fest; Columbia College Chicago; The Poetry Center of Chicago; and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was a member of the League of Canadian Poets for 4 years.

Originally from Ohio (US), Larry lived in Chicago for 19 years, and recently in Toronto, ON, Canada for 5 years with his longtime collaborator, partner, and fellow poet, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas.

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