George Kalamaras


George Kalamaras is an American poet and educator. He is Professor of English at Purdue University, Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he has taught since 1990. He has published nineteen collections of poetry, twelve of which are full-length, including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, the winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize, and The Theory and Function of Mangoes, the winner of the Four Way Books Intro Series. His poetry has been described, as Surrealist.

Personal life

Kalamaras was born in Chicago and grew up in Cedar Lake, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 1980. He earned a master’s in English from Colorado State University and a PhD in English from University at Albany, SUNY.
Between 2014 and 2016 Kalamaras was poet laureate of the American state of Indiana.

Poetry

  • The Theory and Function of Mangoes
  • Borders My Bent Toward
  • Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair
  • Gold Carp Jack Fruit Mirrors
  • The Recumbent Galaxy, co-author Alvaro Cardona-Hine
  • Kingdom of Throat-stuck Luck
  • The Hermit's Way of Being Human
  • That Moment of Wept
  • Luminous in the Owl’s Rib
  • We Slept the Animal: Letters from the American West
  • Marsupial Mouth Movements
  • ''Through the Silk-Heavy Rains''

    Poetry chapbooks

  • Heart Without End
  • Beneath the Breath
  • The Scathering Sound
  • Something Beautiful Is Always Wearing the Trees
  • Mingus Mingus Mingus
  • Symposium on the Body's Left Side
  • ''The Mining Camps of the Mouth''

    Prose

  • ''Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension: Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric of Silence''

    Anthologies

  • Visiting Authors, 2006 / Syracuse YMCA Poetry
  • ''Mapping The Muse: A Bicentennial Look at Indiana Poetry''