Denise Levertov was born in Essex, England, in 1923. She is the author of 24 volumes of poetry, including With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1959); Evening Train (1993); and The Freeing of the Dust (1975), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. She has also published several collections of short stories and essays, including The Poet in the World (1974) and Light up the Cave (1982). Levertov’s other honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the 1990 Robert Frost Medal, the 1993 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and the Governor’s Award from the Washington State Commission for the Humanities. She was also among the first recipients of New York University’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Awards for Arts and Letters. She served as poetry editor for The Nation magazine in 1961 and from 1963-1965, and Mother Jones from 1976-78. She was a professor at Stanford University from 1982 to 1993, where she taught one quarter a year. Denise Levertov died in 1997.
Audio Recordings of Denise Levertov
- Denise Levertov reading her poems with comment in New York City, June 15, 1958
- Denise Levertov and James Tate reading and discussing their poems in the Coolidge Auditorium, Mar. 15, 1976