Hubbry Logo
Saskia HamiltonSaskia HamiltonMain
Open search
Saskia Hamilton
Community hub
Saskia Hamilton
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Saskia Hamilton
Saskia Hamilton
from Wikipedia

Maria Saskia Hamilton (May 5, 1967 – June 7, 2023) was an American poet, editor, and professor and university administrator at Barnard College. She published five collections of poetry, the final of which, All Souls, was posthumously published in September 2023. Her academic focus was largely on the American poet Robert Lowell; she edited several collections of the writings and personal correspondence of Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Elizabeth Bishop. Additionally, she served as the director of literary programs at the Lannan Foundation, as the Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Curriculum at Barnard College, and as an editor at The Paris Review and Literary Imagination.

Key Information

Her work was recognized with awards such as the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and the Morton N. Cohen Award. She held fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Early life

[edit]

Maria Saskia Hamilton was born in Washington, D.C., on May 5, 1967, to Elise Wiarda and John Andrew Hamilton Jr.[1][2][3][4][5] Wiarda is an artist and therapist. When Wiarda was ages two to seven, she lived under Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. Elise Wiarda's grandparents were later honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel for housing and hiding Hugo Sinzheimer and his wife.[6][7][2] Andrew Hamilton was a writer and editor, who, when Saskia Hamilton was young, was a principal analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He later became an editorial writer for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina.[2][1][8] When Saskia was 12, her father re-married to Eliza Euretta Rathbone, an assistant curator at the National Gallery of Art at the time, later the chief curator of The Phillips Collection, and the daughter of Perry T. Rathbone.[9] Hamilton stated that she grew up listening to poetry read by her father and grandmother, and started writing poetry seriously when she was about 18.[10] She had four siblings.[2] Saskia attended Georgetown Day School in D.C.[11]

Education and career

[edit]

Hamilton graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in 1989. Soon after graduating, her work closed out the collection The Kenyon Poets: Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of The Kenyon Review, a compilation of poetry in honor of The Kenyon Review.[12] That year, Hamilton was the winner of a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Sponsored by Ruth Lilly, the fellowship included a US$15,000 prize.[13][14][10] She used the fellowship to attend New York University, where she earned her M.A. in English and creative writing, graduating in 1991.[15][16]

From there, Hamilton worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., from 1992 to 1997.[15] She then lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she was the associate director, later director, of literary programs at the Lannan Foundation,[15][17] before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1999. She spent a year teaching at Kenyon College from 2000 to 2001.[15] Her first poetry collection As for Dream was published by Graywolf Press during that time.[18] She stated that the collection was "partially about watching people deal with illness and death in families, and dealing with the moment of death."[18] She then taught for a year at Stonehill College from 2001 to 2002.[15] She moved to Barnard College in New York City in 2002, where she continued to work until her death.[5][15] She also received her Ph.D. from the Editorial Institute at Boston University.[4]

In 2005, Hamilton published The Letters of Robert Lowell, a compilation of poet Robert Lowell's correspondence.[19][20][21] The book was well received. Andrew Motion writing for The Guardian said, "Her selection, as far as one can judge, is excellent: it certainly gives a rounded picture of a marvellously jagged mind. [...] Best of all, her approach throughout is enthusiastic, as well as scholarly, and lets us see that even if Lowell wrote his letters in a way that's almost opposite to the way he wrote his poems (freely, and with hardly any revision), they nevertheless meet in a single concentration." That year, she also published two collections of her poetry: Divide These and Canal: New & Selected Poems, the latter of which featured some poems from her previous two collections and some new works.[22] In 2008, Hamilton collaborated with Thomas Travisano in editing Words in Air, a collection of the correspondence between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Lowell from 1947 to Lowell's death in 1977.[23]

Hamilton was a judge for the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize.[24] In 2012, she became co-editor for the journal Literary Imagination.[25][4]

In 2014, Hamilton published her fourth collection of poetry, Corridor. David Orr writing for The New York Times and Dan Chiasson writing for The New Yorker both listed the book as one their top poetry books of the year.[26]

Hamilton became Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Curriculum at Barnard College in July 2018.[5] The next month, she joined The Paris Review as an advisory editor.[27][28] In 2019, Hamilton published what would become her most discussed work: The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle and The Dolphin, Two Versions: 1972, 1973.[2][29] The books jointly earned her the 2020 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation[5][30] and The Dolphin Letters received the 2021 Morton N. Cohen Award from The Modern Language Association[5][31]

Her final poetry collection, titled All Souls, was posthumously released in September 2023.[32][33][34]

Personal life and death

[edit]

Hamilton's name is the title of the tenth track of the 2010 Ben Folds and Nick Hornby collaborative album Lonely Avenue; the song's lyrics are the thoughts of a character who has become obsessed with her based only on the sound of her name.[35] She first met Folds and Hornby after the album's release, when she attended a performance at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Lower Manhattan in October 2010.[35] Hamilton later hosted a conversation with Hornby at the Heyman Center at Columbia University in March 2013 as part of their Writing Lives Series.[36]

Hamilton died in Manhattan on June 7, 2023, at age 56, from cancer.[2][28][5] She had a son.[5]

Works

[edit]

Poetry collections

[edit]
  • As for Dream: Poems (2001), Graywolf Press, ISBN 978-1-55597-316-2[37]
  • Divide These: Poems (2005), Graywolf Press, ISBN 978-1-55597-422-0[20]
  • Canal: New & Selected Poems 1993-2005 (2005), Arc Publications, ISBN 978-1-904614-15-9[22]
  • Corridor: Poems (2014), Graywolf Press, ISBN 978-1-55597-675-0[38]
  • All Souls: Poems (2023), Graywolf Press, ISBN 978-1-64445-263-9[39]

As editor

[edit]
  • The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005), Ed. by Saskia Hamilton, Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-53034-1[40]
  • Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008), Ed. by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton, Published by Macmillan, ISBN 9780374531898[41]
  • Poems / Prose (2011), By Elizabeth Bishop, Ed. by Saskia Hamilton, Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0374125589[42]
  • The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle (2019), By Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, Ed. by Saskia Hamilton, Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 9780374141264[43]
  • The Dolphin, Two Versions: 1972, 1973 (2019), By Robert Lowell, Ed. by Saskia Hamilton, Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0374538279[44]
  • Memories of Our Childhood in Wartime Amsterdam 1940-1945 (2022), By Claar Hugenholtz-Wiarda, Louise van Wassenaer-Wiarda, and Elise Wiarda, Ed. by Saskia Hamilton, Self-published, ISBN 9798210608192

As contributor

[edit]
  • The Kenyon Poets: Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of The Kenyon Review (1989), Ed. by Galbraith M. Crump, ISBN 978-0962325007[12]
  • Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American (2010), Ed. by Christopher Ricks, ISBN 978-1-904130-40-6[45]

Awards

[edit]

References

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
Saskia Hamilton (May 5, 1967 – June 7, 2023) was an American poet, editor, and professor renowned for her lyrical poetry exploring themes of memory, loss, and domestic life, as well as her meticulous editorial contributions to the correspondence of mid-20th-century literary figures like and . Born in , she earned a from , a master's from , and a PhD from . Hamilton's poetic oeuvre includes four collections published by Graywolf Press: As for Dream (2001), which features brief, haunting lyrics and prose fragments suspended between states of consciousness; Divide These (2005); Corridor (2014); and the posthumous All Souls (2023), a profound meditation on compassion, fear, and mortality completed shortly before her death from cancer. Her editorial work elevated her profile in literary circles, particularly through The Letters of Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), which she compiled and annotated, and co-editing Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008) with Thomas Travisano, as well as The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle (2019). These volumes drew on her early experience as an assistant to Elizabeth Hardwick, Lowell's wife, and her access to archival materials, offering fresh insights into the personal and artistic lives of these poets. In her academic career, Hamilton joined the English department at in 2002, where she taught creative writing, directed the program, and later served as vice provost for academic programs and curriculum from 2018 until her death. Prior roles included positions at the in , and the Lannan Foundation in . She received fellowships from the Radcliffe and the , and in 2021 was awarded the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her contributions to and editing. Hamilton is survived by her son, Lucien Hamilton, her mother Elise Wiarda, and siblings John, Claudia, Emma, and James.

Early life and education

Early life

Saskia Hamilton was born on May 5, 1967, in Her father, John Andrew Hamilton Jr., was a and editor, while her mother, Elise Wiarda, was an artist and therapist who had emigrated from the to the as an in her late teens. Her parents divorced shortly after her birth, after which her mother returned to the Netherlands with Saskia and her older brother for extended periods, including nearly every summer of her childhood spent on her maternal grandparents' farm in the Woold region. She and her brother grew up primarily in Washington, D.C., where both parents fostered a household filled with literature; her American father and Dutch mother were avid readers who shared poetry aloud, introducing her to works by poets such as and when she was around 11 or 12. At that age, Hamilton began purchasing poetry collections with her own money, drawn to their rhythmic qualities. Her father remarried in 1979, when she was 12, to Eliza E. Rathbone, a at the ; the family included four siblings. Hamilton attended in , through her high school years, where she developed a deepening engagement with language and literature. By age 18, she began composing her own , marking the start of her personal exploration in the form amid these familial and cultural influences. This period of early development preceded her transition to formal higher education at .

Education

Saskia Hamilton earned a degree from in 1989. During her undergraduate years, she demonstrated early engagement with , including selection as a winner in a national convocation for young organized by , where she represented her institution among emerging talents. She pursued graduate studies at , receiving a in English and in 1991. Hamilton then completed a Ph.D. at , with her doctoral centered on the Editorial Institute's rigorous program in editorial theory and literary scholarship. This training equipped her with expertise in textual editing and scholarly analysis, foundational to her later contributions as a and editor.

Professional career

Academic positions

Hamilton began her professional career in literary administration at the in , where she served as poetry coordinator from 1992 to 1997, organizing poetry readings and lectures that supported scholarly engagement with Shakespearean and . From 1997 to 1998, she advanced to roles at the Lannan Foundation in , initially as associate director and subsequently as director of literary programs, where she curated initiatives to promote and support emerging writers. Hamilton's teaching career included positions at , her alma mater, and , where she instructed courses in and before joining in 2002 as a of English. At , her emphasized , , and 20th-century , fostering development through rigorous seminars and collaborative projects. In addition to her professorial duties, Hamilton directed the Women Poets at Barnard program, a public reading series that highlighted established and emerging female poets since 2002, enhancing the college's contributions to literary culture. In July 2018, she was appointed vice provost for academic programs and curriculum, a role in which she oversaw curriculum development, faculty support, and institutional responses to challenges like the until her death in 2023. Her administrative work complemented her occasional editorial contributions to literary journals, bridging academia and publishing.

Editorial roles

Early in her career, while pursuing her master's degree at , Hamilton worked as an assistant to writer Elizabeth Hardwick from 1989, gaining intimate knowledge of mid-20th-century literary figures that informed her later editorial work. Saskia Hamilton served as an advisory editor at starting in 2018, contributing to the selection and promotion of contemporary literary works in the quarterly journal. She also held the position of co-editor at Literary Imagination, a journal published by , beginning in 2012, where she helped shape its focus on poetry, literary criticism, and interdisciplinary essays. From 1997 to 1998, Hamilton worked at the Lannan Foundation as associate director and literary program director, during which she curated the organization's poetry reading series in , expanding its reach to larger venues like the Armory for the Arts to support emerging and established poets. Through these editorial roles in prominent journals and nonprofit literary organizations, Hamilton advanced the visibility of modern poetry and critical discourse, fostering connections between writers and broader audiences outside academic settings.

Personal life and death

Personal life

Saskia Hamilton had one son, Lucien, to whom she was a devoted mother. Little public information is available regarding Hamilton's marriages or long-term romantic partnerships, though she was known to engage in close-knit relationships within literary communities. Hamilton served as the inspiration for the 2010 song "Saskia Hamilton" by and , featured on their collaborative album Lonely Avenue, which celebrates the melodic quality of her name and her poetic persona.

Death

Saskia Hamilton died on June 7, 2023, in , , at the age of 56, after a of cancer. Her final collection, All Souls, was published posthumously by Graywolf Press on September 5, 2023, featuring poems she completed amid her illness. In the immediate aftermath, , where Hamilton had served as a and vice provost, hosted a event on November 1, 2023, attended by family, colleagues, and students to honor her contributions to and education. A follow-up reading celebrating All Souls took place on November 2, 2023, at the college. Literary organizations, including the , published tributes and excerpts from her work in the months following her death, recognizing her enduring influence on contemporary and editing.

Literary works

Poetry collections

Saskia Hamilton's debut poetry collection, As for Dream, published by Graywolf Press in 2001, features haunting lyrics and prose fragments that hover between states of , exploring dream-like narratives, personal , , loss, longing, and death. The volume delves into the power of dreams as a lens for emotional and existential tension, with poems that blend renewal and affliction, such as reflections on planting bulbs in a setting symbolizing fragile hope. Her second collection, Divide These, also from Graywolf Press in 2005, examines division and reconciliation in language and personal experience through delicate observations paired with assertive, unsettling music. The poems address perpetually unrewarded efforts to achieve amid atmospheres like deathbeds and love letters, evoking a sense of uncertainty and emotional fragmentation. Critics praised its atmospheric depth and suggestion of ongoing narrative continuity. That same year, Hamilton released Canal: New & Selected Poems 1993–2005 with Arc Publications, her first book in the UK, compiling selections from As for Dream and Divide These alongside new poems spanning over a decade of work. This volume offers a view of her evolving style, blending earlier introspective fragments with fresh explorations of linguistic and thematic reconciliation. In 2014, Graywolf Press published Corridor, Hamilton's third full-length collection, which contemplates passage, memory, and urban life through a study of motion and time. The succinct poems capture glanced landscapes and lives in passing, emphasizing the immeasurable in fleeting human-nature interactions and historical awareness. It was named one of the best poetry books of 2014 by and . Hamilton's final collection, the posthumous All Souls, appeared from Graywolf Press in 2023 and addresses time, illness, and history in expansive poems that transform , , expectation, and into . Centered on themes of mortality, maternal , survival, and the limits of language, it includes lyric fragments and a suite attuned to , completed shortly before her death. The book was a finalist for the 2023 for Poetry and received acclaim from Publishers Weekly (as one of the best poetry books of 2023), Time (a must-read of 2023), and the for its profound meditation on tentative hope amid loss.

As editor

Saskia Hamilton's editorial contributions centered on curating correspondences and selected writings of mid-20th-century American poets, particularly and , thereby enriching scholarly understanding of their interpersonal dynamics, creative influences, and literary legacies. Her meticulous approach to and selection highlighted the interplay between and artistic production, drawing on archival materials to reveal nuanced aspects of . This body of work, spanning over a decade, established Hamilton as a key figure in preserving and interpreting the epistolary records of these influential writers. In 2005, Hamilton edited The Letters of , published by , compiling over 1,000 letters from Lowell's correspondence across his lifetime. This volume traces Lowell's evolving relationships with family, friends, and peers like , while illuminating his struggles with , political engagements, and poetic craft during pivotal moments in American literary history. Hamilton's collaboration with Thomas Travisano yielded Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell in 2008, also from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book gathers more than 400 letters exchanged between the poets from 1947 to 1977, showcasing their mutual admiration, candid critiques of each other's work, and shared insights into themes of exile, observation, and form that defined their aesthetics. By contextualizing these exchanges against their biographies, the edition underscores the epistolary bond as a vital catalyst for both poets' innovations. In 2011, she edited the centenary boxed set Poems / Prose of Elizabeth Bishop's works for , encompassing all poems published in Bishop's lifetime, 50 previously uncollected poems, translations, and a substantial selection of including stories and essays. This comprehensive edition facilitates a holistic view of Bishop's oeuvre, emphasizing her precision in language and her explorations of , loss, and across genres. Hamilton and Travisano co-edited The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle in 2019, published by , which compiles letters from Lowell, Hardwick, and associates like during the period of Lowell's marital breakdown and his controversial use of private correspondence in . The collection delves into the emotional and ethical complexities of their relationship, providing essential context for Lowell's turn and its impact on . Her final major editorial project, The Dolphin: Two Versions, 1972, 1973 by , appeared in 2019 from , presenting side-by-side texts of the original and revised editions of Lowell's Pulitzer Prize-winning . This dual-format edition exposes the alterations Lowell made after backlash over incorporating unaltered letters from Hardwick, inviting analysis of authorship, privacy, and revision in . Hamilton's annotations further elucidate the work's biographical underpinnings and its enduring debates in literary ethics.

As contributor

Saskia Hamilton contributed selected poems to the anthology Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American, Oxford 2004-2009, edited by and Jo Ann Miller and published by Waywiser Press in 2010. This collection featured works from 34 contemporary poets, including British and American voices such as , David Ferry, and Rosanna Warren, fostering a across transatlantic poetic traditions through readings and selections that emphasized shared linguistic and thematic explorations. Hamilton's inclusion highlighted her emerging role in this cross-cultural exchange, with her poems exemplifying precise observation and rhythmic patterning akin to those in her solo collections. In addition to this early collaborative appearance, Hamilton's poetry appeared posthumously in prominent anthologies that underscored her influence on American verse. Her poem "All Souls" was selected for The Best American Poetry 2024, guest-edited by Mary Jo Salter and published by Scribner, appearing originally in The Yale Review. This annual collection, known for curating standout contemporary poems, positioned Hamilton alongside contributors like and , affirming her lyrical depth in addressing memory and transience. Similarly, her poem "Faring" was featured in Raised by Wolves: Fifty Poets on Fifty Poems, a Graywolf Anthology (2024), where it received commentary from another poet, illustrating her work's resonance within Graywolf Press's legacy of innovative voices. These selections in collections emphasizing poetic commentary and selection processes extended Hamilton's contributions to broader literary conversations, often echoing motifs of urban observation and emotional restraint found in her individual volumes.

Awards and recognition

Awards

Saskia Hamilton received the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the in 2020, a $7,500 prize honoring outstanding book-length works of criticism on poetic practice. The award recognized her editorial contributions in two volumes: The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, , and Their Circle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) and Given: New Selected Poems and Letters by (New Directions, 2019). In 2021, Hamilton was awarded the Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters by the , which honors exceptional scholarly editions of correspondence. This biennial prize, established in 1989, was given for her work on The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, , and Their Circle, praised for its meticulous editing and contextual insights into mid-20th-century literary circles. That same year, she received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, one of several annual honors recognizing significant contributions to . The $10,000 award highlighted Hamilton's achievements as a , editor, and . Hamilton's final collection, All Souls (Graywolf Press, 2023), was named a finalist for the in in 2023, a posthumous recognition of her innovative exploration of mortality, memory, and domestic life. The award, announced in January 2024, underscores the collection's critical acclaim among five finalists.

Fellowships

Saskia Hamilton received the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the in 1989, a $15,000 award intended to support emerging between the ages of 21 and 31. This fellowship, which she won as an undergraduate at , provided crucial early encouragement for her development as a . In 2000, Hamilton was awarded a Bunting Fellowship (now known as a Radcliffe Fellowship) at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at , where she served as a Dean's Fellow. This residency offered dedicated time and resources for her creative and scholarly pursuits in poetry. Hamilton later received a Poetry Fellowship in 2007, recognizing her contributions to contemporary and providing financial support for her ongoing work. In 2009, she was granted a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in , which enabled her to advance her next book of poems. These fellowships collectively sustained Hamilton's ability to focus on her writing amid her academic and editorial commitments.

References

Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.