Craig Czury

Poet

Dunmore, PA
Pennsylvania US

Author's Bio

Craig Czury is from the Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania. A 2020-22 Fulbright Scholar to Chile, Craig spent fifteen of his early years hitchhiking North America, working odd jobs and studying poetry from European and Latin American poets translated to English. “Growing up in immigrant labor communities, English wasn’t my first language, broken English was, in all of its visceral tones and undertones, like poetry.”

For over three decades, Craig has conducted poetry, life-writing, writing as healing, and Poem Fusion (multi-voice poetry performance) workshops in schools, prisons, homeless shelters, universities, mental hospitals, community centers, and poetry festivals all over the world. In 1993, he was awarded the Key to the City of Scranton for his intergenerational Scranton Poem Opera, written and performed with students, parents, and elders.

In 2008, Craig earned his Masters of Fine Arts degree from Wilkes University. He served as Poet Laureate of Berks County, from 2010-2012, while living in Reading, where he had also received an National Endowment for the Arts grant to conduct collaborative, community Poem Fusion performances and public poetry murals. Working with AmeriCorps*WritersCorps in Washington, DC, 1995-96, he conducted poetry workshops with inmates at St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital, fifty years after Ezra Pound was a “patient” there. Through the Americans for the Arts Artist Exchange Fellowship and the Derry Playhouse in 1999, Craig united Catholic and Protestant communities with his historic poetry writing workshops with students in Northern Ireland, performed for BBC Radio FOYLE.

Craig was awarded Laureate of the 2011 Ditët e Naimit International Albanian Poetry Festival in 1999, and the following year he received the prestiges F. Lammot Belin Scholarship for Artists, allowing him to finish his book of docu-poems, THUMB NOTES ALMANAC: Hitchhiking the Marcellus Shale, from his observations and interviews while hitchhiking rural roads in his home N.E Pennsylvania “fracking” region during the height of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling.

In 2018, Craig toured the Balkans, giving poetry readings in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo through P.E.N. Albania, of which he was awarded Honorary Membership. In 2019, Craig was honored with the Alexander the Great Gold Medal for Letters & Arts through UNESCO/ Piraeus on Salimina Island in Greece; and the Dafne Lifetime Achievement Award in Aulla, Italy.

Craig is the author of over 20 books, many of which have been translated into Albanian, Russian Croatian, Lithuanian, Spanish, and Italian. He now lives in Dunmore, PA, and Northern Italy where he teaches poetry writing at the Istituto Galileo Galilei science high school in Crema, Lombardia. His most recent books, THUMB NOTES ALMANAC, FIFTEEN STONES, prose poems, and POSTCARDS & ANCIENT TEXTS, travel poems over 40 years, will be available at craigczury.com.

Publications & Prizes

Anthologies:
Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press, 2005)
,
Palpable Clock: 25 Years of Mulberry Poets (University of Scranton Press, 2005)
,
The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal (White Pine Press, 2000)
,
What Have You Lost? (Greenwillow Books, 1999)
,
Coalseam: Poems from the Anthracite Region (University of Scranton Press, 1993)
,
Fine Line that Screams (Endless Mountains Review, 1993)
Books:
BECAUSE ALTHOUGH DESPITE (Foothills Publishing, 2014)
,
American Know-How: Patent Pending (Paper Kite Press, 2006)
,
Kam Frikë Ta Them / I'm Afraid To Say (Albanian Trans. Silke Blumbach) (MLN Ditet e Naimit, 2006)
,
KITCHEN OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION (Foothills Publishing, 2006)
,
Gods Shiny Glass Eye (Foothills Publishing, 2005)
,
American Know-How: In Attesa Di Brevetto (Edizioni Empirìa, 2003)
,
Closing Out (Foothills Publishing, 2003)
,
In My Silence To Justify (Foothills Publishing, 2003)
,
Tecnologia Norteamericana - Patente en Tramite- y Otros Poemas (PapelTinta Ediciones, 2003)
,
Parallel Rivertime (Petropol Press, 1999)
,
Unreconciled Faces (Foothills Publishing, 1999)
,
Shadow/Orphan Shadow (Pine Press, 1996)
,
Obit Hotel (Pine Press, 1993)
Journals:
Ars-Interpres
,
Clown War
,
Five Fingers Review
,
Invisible City
,
Kayak
,
Minnesota Review
,
Origin
, ,
Parnassus
,
The Prose Poem
,
Washington Review
Prizes won: 

F. Lamott Belin Artists Scholarship (2013) Poet Laureate of Berks County, PA (2010-12) Laureate of the International Albanian Poetry Festival Ditet e Naimit (2011), P.E.N. Albania Honorary Membership (2019), The Alexander the Great Gold Medal for Letters & Arts through UNESCO/ Piraeus on Salimina Island in Greece (2019); The Dafne Lifetime Achievement Award in Aulla, Italy (2019), Fulbright Scholarship to Chile (2020-22).

Personal Favorites

What I'm reading now: 
After-Dinner Declarations by Nicanor Parra, Vertical Poetry by Roberto Juarroz , Poems For The Millennium (vols. 1,2,3,4) by Rothenberg/Joris eds.

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Prefers to work with: 
At Risk Youth, Incarcerated individuals
Born in: 
Wilkes-Barre
Raised in: 
PA
Pennsylvania
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: Jul 29, 2021