The Poet and the Poem
2025-26 Series
Featured Gregory Orr
Click here for Gregory Orr podcast.mp3
GREGORY ORR is author of thirteen collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Selected Books of the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). W.W. Norton will publish a new collection Coming to Learn: Late Poems in the spring of 2026.
He is also the author of a memoir, The Blessing (reissued Milkweed Editions, 2019), which was chosen by Publisher's Weekly as one of the fifty best non-fiction books of 2002. His autobiographical essay on his experiences as a volunteer in the Civil Rights Movement, "Return to Hayneville," was reprinted in Best Essays of 2009, Best Creative Non-fiction 2009, and Pushcart Prizes.
In addition, he is the author of Poetry as Survival (University of Georgia Press, 2002), a consideration of the existential function of the personal lyric, and A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry (W. W. Norton 2018). He's been interviewed by Krista Tippett for her "On Being" series and his personal essay was chosen to be broadcast on National Public Radio's “This I Believe” series in the spring of 2006. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Virginia, where he taught from 1975 until 2020 and where he was the founder and first director of its MFA Program in Writing. He lives with his wife, the painter Trisha Orr in Charlottesville, Virginia.
