Poetry and the Eternal City: David Keplinger Wins Prestigious Rome Prize
This fall, award-winning poet and literature professor David Keplinger will trade campus life at 蝌蚪直播 for the cobblestoned streets of Trastevere, as he takes up residence at the American Academy in Rome as a 2025鈥2026 Rome Prize Fellow in Literature.
Keplinger has been awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize鈥攁 gift of the Drue Heinz Trust鈥攐ne of the most distinguished fellowships in the arts and humanities. The academy has made an outsized impact on the intellectual and cultural life of the United States, and its Fellows and Residents have been recognized with 622 Guggenheim Fellowships, 74 Pulitzer Prizes, 54 MacArthur Fellowships, 26 Grammy awards, five Pritzker Prizes, nine Poet Laureate appointments, and five Nobel Prizes.
Beginning in late August, Keplinger will join the academy鈥檚 latest international cohort of artists, composers, architects, and scholars for a five-month residency on the Academy鈥檚 11-acre campus tucked into the heart of the Eternal City. He will focus on this writing during this time. 鈥淚鈥檓 completing a new collection, a sample of which was part of the application for the fellowship,鈥 he says. 鈥淚 also expect to complete a collection of essays based on my work with the Mindfulness Initiative.鈥
A Deep Immersion
The American Academy in Rome, founded in 1894, is more than just a place to write. It's a community that fosters interdisciplinary exchange among its residents.听
Keplinger is ready to embrace the challenge of being the sole literature fellow in the group. 鈥淭here is a long tradition of collaboration between the fellows,鈥 he says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know exactly how it will turn out, but I鈥檓 certain I鈥檒l be interacting with a lot of talented scholars in visual art, architecture, musical composition, medieval studies, ancient studies and more. It鈥檚 frankly the most exciting aspect of the award鈥攁s the only literature fellow in the resident, I鈥檒l be forced a bit out of my comfort zone.鈥澨
The cohort lives side by side, each person with their own studio or work area, but sharing lots of common spaces in Trastevere, which overlooks the Janiculum Hill, with easy access to Roman ruins, Renaissance palazzos.听
For Keplinger, this return to Rome also marks a deeper immersion in a city he鈥檚 come to know鈥攁nd love. During the summers of 2015 and 2016, he ran a creative writing program for AU graduate students in tandem with John Cabot University in Rome. 鈥淟iving there for six weeks each summer, I got to experience much of what we already associate with Rome鈥攖he ancient sites, the literary landmarks, the art and architecture,鈥 he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 looking forward to experiencing the everydayness of the city, and some of the hidden treasures, yet to be discovered.鈥
More about David Keplinger
David Keplinger is the author of Ice (Milkweed Editions, 2023) and seven other collections of poetry, including The World to Come (Conduit Books, 2021), winner of the 2020 Minds on Fire Prize and Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 UNT Rilke Prize. Among his earlier books are The Most Natural Thing (New Issues, 2013) and The Prayers of Others (New Issues, 2006) which won the Colorado Book Award. His first collection, The Rose Inside, was selected by Mary Oliver for the 1999 T.S. Eliot Prize. Other honors include The Poetry Society of America鈥檚 Emily Dickinson Prize, the Cavafy Prize from Poetry International, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. 听
His translations of Danish poet Carsten Ren茅 Nielsen have appeared in three volumes, World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors (New Issues, 2007), House Inspections (BOA Editions, 2011), a Lannan Literary Series Selection, and Forty-One Objects (Bitter Oleander, 2019), longlisted for the 2020 National Translation Award. A collaboration with German poet Jan Wagner, The Art of Topiary, was published in 2017 by Milkweed Editions and a second, Wisp, will appear in 2026. David鈥檚 own work has been translated most recently in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and China.
In 2023 he founded The Mindfulness Initiative at AU (MIAU). His community outreach combines the tenets of mindfulness practice , exploring how the written word can hold grief and reflect kind attention. He has taught at AU since 2007 and was named as 蝌蚪直播鈥檚 Scholar-Teacher of the Year in 2022.