Michael Brosnan



Michael Brosnan the author of three books of poetry: EMU BLIS, BUMS LIE, BLUE-ISM (2024), Adrift (2023) and The Sovereignty of the Accidental (2018).

His poetry has appeared in dozens of literary journals, including Confrontation, New Letters, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, The Moth, and Rattle. His writing has won awards from New Letters, The University of New Hampshire, C.W. Post College, and other arts organizations. In 2023, his poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Michael is also the author of Against the Current, a book on new directions in urban education for at-risk students, which served at the basis for the award-winning documentary, Accelerating America.

He served for more than two decades as the editor of Independent School, an award-winning magazine on precollegiate education, and is currently the senior editor for the website Teaching While White.

Because of the importance of quality education for individuals, communities, the nation, and world, he writes often on related matters, especially on the centrality of diversity, equity, and inclusion. He also works as an independent editor for various organizations and individuals.

Praise for his poetry

In his third collection, Michael Brosnan dissects and appraises, as with a surgeon’s scalpel or jeweler’s loupe, the concept of the sublime (‘creature of mud and fog’): its guts and wonders, its flaws and majesty…. A passion project of sweeping scope and crisp wit, this book will engage any reader who’s ever been bewildered or frustrated or amazed by the ineffable grandeur of our beautiful, fractured, complicated world.

— Maggie Dietz, author of Perennial Fall, winner of the Jane Kenyon Award and the Grolier Book Prize

…

So many of the reveries and narratives among the poems in Adrift are trapdoors into emotional and philosophical spaces that bring the cosmic and quotidian closer together. Whether he’s weighing stardust or the “musical hits of 1972,” Pez or the “truth behind the Ascension,” Yoda or Springsteen, Brosnan is a shrewd, seductive observer, flirting with doom, mortality, “the searing knowledge of impermanence,” yes, but also deciphering a way to survive from the “hieroglyphics” of the natural world, “Some truth/about the art of living and perishing/in the flow of things.

I love the poems in this book, would gladly remain adrift in the subtle music of their multifaceted lineation, their authentic undulating meditations on “the stubborn art of hope.”

— Ralph Sneeden, author of Surface Fugue and Evidence of the Journey

…

[The Sovereignty of the Accidental] is stunning book — fresh as a crisp wind after days of sluggish weather. Poems which stir language, memory, momentary intense awareness, to give us back the bracing joy of clear thinking. Brosnan writes with a deft, sure hand. How can there be so much potent magic in a single stanza or phrase? It’s as if he found the pulse of poetry.”

— Naomi Shihab Nye, author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award) and other works

His is a voice of both musical and intelligent authority.

— Eamon Grennan, author of Matter of Fact and The Quick of It 

…

EMU BLIS was named a finalist for the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award. Judges comments include:

  • “A highly innovative and experimental exploration of the relationship of the sublime (mystery, ecstasy, terror) with poetry.”

  • “Surprising, inventive, and engaging in both form and language.”

  • "A deep philosophical question in poesia that's enlightening and engaging.”

  • “The tension created in each line is compelling,”

  • “The work reveals the on-going human condition reflected against the modern world, technology and social media's stronghold, political division, lack of empathy — all of it.”

More publication details in the Portfolio.

 

Services

I make my living as a writer, editor, and speaker. I have a number of clients these days, but I’m available for other writing and editing assignments on occasion — as well as workshops, conferences, and literary events. I’ve run writing workshops for educators, consulted with schools on issues of diversity and inclusion, been a visiting poet and writer in schools, and presented at numerous education conferences — including the Spirituality in Education Conference at Teachers College and the Education Innovation Summit.

As a freelance writer and editor, I’ve worked with numerous organizations, publications, and individuals in a variety of fields. If you are looking for editorial help or would like me to participate in an event, please feel free to contact me.

 

Blog

Much of my writing appears in other publications, but I do maintain my own blog — as the spirit moves me.