Lannan Foundation

Killarney Clary, Poet - Marfa, Spring 1998

Killarney Clary, who received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1992, has published two books of poetry, Who Whispered Near Me, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and By Common Salt.

In a review of Who Whispered Near Me, Gary Young wrote, “There is no glamour here, little drama. Her subjects are prosaic, but her prose captures the internal rhythms of both memory and casual speech, and has been wrenched into a fierce lyricism. Clary’s poetry is a gymnastic of mind. We may feel submerged, lost in someone else’s thought, but her poems are maps, and Clary leads us surely through a maze we discover is nothing less than the rich pattern of a life.”

Ms. Clary was born in Los Angles in 1954, and was educated at the University of California at Irvine, where she received degrees in studio art and poetry writing. She has taught at the University of California at Irvine and at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.