Gail mazur biography
- Gail Mazur was.
- Gail Mazur (b.
- Gail Mazur is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Founding Director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, a weekly poetry.
- •
Twelve Questions:
An Interview with Gail Mazur
JW: Were you inspired by a particular type of elegy when you collected the poems for Figures in a Landscape? Approaching this book with the knowledge that it was published after the death of your husband, Michael, I had particular expectations about what I would find there. Yet the poems do not express a lament for the deceased so much as an affirmation of a life dedicated to art, the life you shared. Did you have a particular model for elegy in mind when you were putting this collection together?
GM: None of the poems were written after the death of my husband, but they were written in the terrible shadow of impending loss. Art, for me, for both of us, was what we believed in most profoundly, it was what our lives were about. While we were still together, the power of art, the intensity and frailties of love, and the fragility of life, informed everything. You’re right, it was affirmative. So, I wasn’t writing elegies. Not then.
JW: How did you meet Michael? Are your children writers and artists?
GM: We actually met when
- •
Mazur, Gail 1937–
PERSONAL:
Born November 10, 1937, in Cambridge, MA; daughter of Manuel (in antiques business) and Mildred (a teacher) Beckwith; married Michael Mazur (an artist), December 28, 1958; children: Daniel Isaac, Kathe Elizabeth. Education:Smith College, B.A., 1959; studied with Robert Lowell, 1975-77.
ADDRESSES:
Home—Cambridge, MA. E-mail—[email protected].
CAREER:
Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Cambridge, MA, instructor in poetry, 1973-2002. Founder and director of Blacksmith House poetry program, beginning 1973, editor for Blacksmith Press, beginning 1974. Emerson College, Boston, MA, poet-in-residence, 1979-80; Lesley College, Cambridge, MA, mentor, 1983-84; University of Massachusetts—Boston, faculty member, 1985, 1991. Member of board of directors of "Book Affair"; has given readings from her works throughout New England and the Tennessee poetry circuit, and served as juror for poetry competitions.
MEMBER:
Poetry Society of America.
AWARDS, HONORS:
Fellowship for Ossabaw Island, 1975; National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 1978; They Gail Mazur was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised in Auburndale, Massachusetts. A graduate of Smith College, she has lived primarily in Cambridge and Provincetown since the 1960s, with periods in New York City, Houston, and Los Angeles. In 1973, Mazur founded the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Harvard Square. As an activist with her late husband—the artist Michael Mazur—and others, she cofounded, in 1968, Artists Against Racism and the War, and later they were activists for a Nuclear Freeze. Mazur is Distinguished Senior Writer in Residence in Emerson College’s graduate program and has served for many years on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In the warming house, children lace their skates, By Gail Mazur•
More By This Poet
Ice
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.
A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,
clumping across the frozen beach to the river.
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,
the...
Copyright ©icythaw.pages.dev 2025