Dougherty, Sean Thomas 1965-

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Dougherty, Sean Thomas 1965-

PERSONAL:

Born 1965, in New York, NY. Education: Syracuse University, B.A., 1995, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Erie, PA.

CAREER:

Poet. Before attending college, worked three years in warehouses and factories; worked briefly as a teacher; Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, NY, former faculty member, c. late 1990s; Pennsylvania State University, Erie, faculty member.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pinyon Press Poetry Prize, Mesa State College, 2000, for Except by Falling; Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Prize, Bitter Oleander Press, 2002; nine Pushcart Prize nominations; two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Maria Mazziotti Gillan: Essays on Her Works, Guernica (Buffalo, NY), 2007.

The Blue City (novella), Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 2008.

Also editor of Along the Lake: Contemporary Writing from Erie, Lake Effect, and Red Brick Review. Contributor to anthologies, textbooks, and literary journals.

POETRY

Except by Falling, Pinyon Press (Grand Junction, CO), 2000.

The Biography of Broken Things, Mitki/Mitki Press (Denver, NC), 2002.

Toward a Choreography: New and Selected Poems and Performance Writings, Mitki/Mitki Press (Denver, NC), 2003.

Nightshift Belonging to Lorca, Mammoth Books (Dubois, PA), 2004.

Broken Hallelujahs, BOA Editions (Rochester, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sean Thomas Dougherty comes from a mixed family heritage of Hungarian Jew, Irish, and African American backgrounds. Raised by his grandparents, he endured a childhood of poverty in innercity areas, including Brooklyn, New York, and Toledo, Ohio. He later moved again with his family to New Hampshire, where he attended high school after having dropped out while in Brooklyn. After high school, Dougherty spent three years working odd jobs at factories and warehouses. He eventually returned to school, attending Syracuse University while earning money loading trucks during the late shift to pay for tuition and expenses. Eventually completing all the classes toward a Ph.D. at Syracuse, Dougherty had not completed his dissertation when he accepted a teaching job at Pennsylvania State University. In between classes, Dougherty has become well known for his "electrifying performances" of his verses around the country, according to the BOA Editions Web site. His works embrace a wide variety of cultures, celebrating music in both content and rhythm and appealing to working-class people.

D. Richard Scannell once asked Dougherty in an interview for Bookslut: "Your poems are concerned with people on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, people who are struggling and ignored, yet at the same time you use words and allusions and forms passed down through academic traditions. Why bring these two worlds together on the page?" To this, the poet replied: "I consider my work exploratory, if not experimental, though I don't feel close to a lot of experimental writers. A lot of so-called experimental writing leaves the world too much for my tastes. Too many poets of that caste sound like they can only exist in a classroom or gallery. That is fine for them. But I want my poems to exist on many fronts, in many places, for Giotto and graffiti, for the bodega and the cathedral."

Music informs much of his poetry, including everything from the tango to Cajun, Irish, and Polish music. He has credited a Polish girlfriend with turning him on to the accordion, and the rhythms of the Polish waltz inspired him to create a verse rhythm called the Oberek. This particular rhythm especially informs the poems of his collection Broken Hallelujahs, in which the author explores his Eastern European roots. The collection touches on themes and scenes ranging from the schoolyard to the inner city and from Europe to the jazz musicians of America. The result is "to create a lively, sometimes graceful, and often insightful field guide to our multifaceted American Zeitgeist," according to Fred Muratori in Library Journal.