RASA

Joanne Dominique Dwyer was born in Queens, NY. Her poetic life began as an intuitive, self-taught writer, whose earliest influences were Anne Sexton, Pablo Neruda and Sherman Alexie. After a short foray in performance and slam poetry, Dwyer attended Warren Wilson's program for Writers where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing. She was featured on the cover of The American Poetry Review, before her first poetry collection, Belle Laide, from Sarabande Books, was published (2013). She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award, an American Poetry Review Jerome J. Shestack prize, a Massachusetts Review Anne Halley Prize, a Pushcart nominee, and a Bread Loaf Scholar. She was also included in Best American Poetry, 2019. Dwyer counts her experiences working with teenagers and poetry, most recently in the small rural high school in Pecos, New Mexico, through the support of the Witter Bynner Foundation, as one of her most meaningful engagements with poetry. For many years, Dwyer was a visiting poet to people with dementia and Alzheimer's in memory care units. Rasa, chosen by David Lehman for the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, is Dwyer's second collection of poems.