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Diane Raptosh
Diane Raptosh (born October 14, 1961) is an American poet of Sicilian/American descent who became the first poet laureate for Boise, Idaho, in 2013, a position that was eliminated after her tenure. A self-described "noted author, poet and educator," “highly active ambassador for poetry,” and “cutting-edge advocate,” Raptosh grew up in Idaho and attended the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, earning a BA in literature and modern languages. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, returning to teach undergraduates at the College of Idaho in 1990. She is the mother of Keats Conley, whose first book, Guidance from the Gods of Seahorses, was a finalist for the Wandering Aengus award and was published by Green Writers Press in 2021. Both mother and daughter use alliteration, assonance, and puns to craft whimsical poems.
Raptosh received three literature fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and holds the Eyck-Berringer Endowed Chair in English at the College of Idaho. In 2013, the Idaho Commission on the Arts awarded her the position of Writer-in-Residence, the highest literary honor in the entire state of Idaho.
At the College of Idaho, Raptosh teaches literature and creative writing and directs the Criminal Justice Studies program, through which Raptosh and students facilitate year-long writing workshops in prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers and safe houses throughout southeast Idaho and western Oregon, and are introduced to the study of American prison writing.
Raptosh lives in Boise, Idaho, with her family.
Well known within Idaho, Raptosh writes in forms including prose poetry and sonnets. She is interested in what one poem in American Amnesiac calls "the spine of a possible decency."
Raptosh's first book of poems, Just West of Now (Guernica, Canada), was published in 1992. Her other books of poetry are Labor Songs (Guernica, 1999), Parents from a Different Alphabet (Guernica, 2008), and American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press, 2013).
The poems in Just West of Now are concerned with "our failures of communication, the limitations and possibilities of speech, the search for a literal and figurative home, the entanglements of love given and received," according to Alice Fulton, who noted that "Raptosh’s work will please those who don’t read much poetry as well as those who read little else."
Her second collection, Labor Songs, "speaks in many voices in order to scrutinize the world from multiple perspectives... to chart a complex geography centered in Idaho but further reaching out towards Michigan, Florida, Alaska, and beyond," according to Sandra M. Gilbert.
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Diane Raptosh
Diane Raptosh (born October 14, 1961) is an American poet of Sicilian/American descent who became the first poet laureate for Boise, Idaho, in 2013, a position that was eliminated after her tenure. A self-described "noted author, poet and educator," “highly active ambassador for poetry,” and “cutting-edge advocate,” Raptosh grew up in Idaho and attended the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, earning a BA in literature and modern languages. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, returning to teach undergraduates at the College of Idaho in 1990. She is the mother of Keats Conley, whose first book, Guidance from the Gods of Seahorses, was a finalist for the Wandering Aengus award and was published by Green Writers Press in 2021. Both mother and daughter use alliteration, assonance, and puns to craft whimsical poems.
Raptosh received three literature fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and holds the Eyck-Berringer Endowed Chair in English at the College of Idaho. In 2013, the Idaho Commission on the Arts awarded her the position of Writer-in-Residence, the highest literary honor in the entire state of Idaho.
At the College of Idaho, Raptosh teaches literature and creative writing and directs the Criminal Justice Studies program, through which Raptosh and students facilitate year-long writing workshops in prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers and safe houses throughout southeast Idaho and western Oregon, and are introduced to the study of American prison writing.
Raptosh lives in Boise, Idaho, with her family.
Well known within Idaho, Raptosh writes in forms including prose poetry and sonnets. She is interested in what one poem in American Amnesiac calls "the spine of a possible decency."
Raptosh's first book of poems, Just West of Now (Guernica, Canada), was published in 1992. Her other books of poetry are Labor Songs (Guernica, 1999), Parents from a Different Alphabet (Guernica, 2008), and American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press, 2013).
The poems in Just West of Now are concerned with "our failures of communication, the limitations and possibilities of speech, the search for a literal and figurative home, the entanglements of love given and received," according to Alice Fulton, who noted that "Raptosh’s work will please those who don’t read much poetry as well as those who read little else."
Her second collection, Labor Songs, "speaks in many voices in order to scrutinize the world from multiple perspectives... to chart a complex geography centered in Idaho but further reaching out towards Michigan, Florida, Alaska, and beyond," according to Sandra M. Gilbert.