Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Rowan Ricardo Phillips (born 1974 in New York City) is an American poet and writer.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Phillips in 2020
Born1974 (age 46–47)
New York, New York, US
OccupationPoet
Writer
Alma mater
GenrePoetry · Sportswriting · Nonfiction · Essay · Literary Criticism · Translation · Screenwriting
Notable worksHeaven
Living Weapon
The Circuit
Website
rowanricardophillips.com

He is the author of the poetry collections The Ground (2012),[1] Heaven (2015),[2] and Living Weapon (2020),[3] the non-fiction books When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness[4] and The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey,[5] and a translation from the Catalan of Salvador Espriu's short-story collection Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth.[6]

Phillips has been the recipient of a Whiting Award,[7] a Guggenheim Fellowship,[8] the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award,[9] and the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Prize.[10] He won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry in 2013[11] and the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting in 2019.[12]

Life

Phillips was born in New York City. His parents are from Antigua and Barbuda.[13] He graduated from Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College and has a doctorate in English Literature from Brown University.[14]

Phillips is the Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of English at Williams College[15] and teaches Creative Writing at Princeton.[16] He is a Professor of English at Stony Brook University.[17] He lives in New York City, Barcelona, and Williamstown, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.[18]

Writing

Phillips's first three books of poems––The Ground,[1] Heaven,[2] and Living Weapon[3]––can be read as a poetry trilogy.[19] His poems engage such topics as the role of the imagination in human experience, the power of the sublime, the ubiquity of beauty, the history of literature, the necessity of translation, U.S. history, racism, colonialism, police violence, capitalism, and the Black Lives Matter movement.[11][20][21] Through all of these subjects, Phillips's work meditates on the role of the poem and the poet, referencing poetic tradition from Greek mythology through centuries of English and American verse.[19] Poet and scholar Evie Shockley writes of The Ground that Phillips's poems “carry the authoritative descriptions and rhythms of Walcott, the philosophical and symbolic flights of Stevens, the subtle humor and cosmopolitanism of Dove, but in a language whose musical blend of the contemporary and the timeless is all Phillips’s own. These poems assert cycles—they repeat, recur, and return—but where we end up is not where we started.”[22] The Trinidadian poet and writer Andre Bagoo said of the Phillips trilogy: “Look closely and you can see major moments in US history informing his three collections. The Ground (2012) fell under in the shadow of 9/11; Heaven (2015) under the presidency of Barack Obama; and now the final part of this informal trinity, Living Weapon (2020) comes in the age of Donald Trump and COVID-19.”[21]

Phillips is the author of a book of literary criticism on African American poetry, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness (2010),[4] and a translation from the Catalan of Salvador Espriu’s story collection Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (2012).[6]

Phillips is known for his sportswriting on tennis,[23] soccer,[24] basketball,[25] and baseball.[26] He has contributed writing on sports to The New York Times Magazine,[26] The New Yorker,[27] The New Republic[28] and the Paris Review.[29] About his book The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey, which won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting in 2019,[12] the novelist John Green writes, “As sports writing goes, The Circuit is unusual in the very best way. Rowan Ricardo Phillips writes with such fluidity, and packs the book with bursts of brilliance. This is a compulsively readable guide to one truly Homeric year of professional tennis.”[30] The book follows the 2017 men's ATP Tour, featuring players Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, David Goffin, and Albert Ramos Viñolas. Writing for The New York Times, Geoff Macdonald describes the book as “a poet’s love song to the game of tennis.”[31] Phillips's writing on basketball has been collected by the Library of America.[32] His soccer writing has been praised by English soccer star and sports commentator Gary Lineker.[33]

Phillips wrote a screenplay for a biopic of baseball icon Roberto Clemente adapted from the David Maraniss biography Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero. The film is set to be directed by Ezra Edelman.[34]

His poem “Heralds of Delicioso Coco Helado” was adapted into the song “Coco Helado” by Spanglish Fly featuring Phillips performing his poem.[35] It appeared in Spike Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It.[36]

Awards and honors

Bibliography
Poetry
  • The Ground: Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2012. ISBN 9781466802537.
  • Heaven: Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2015. ISBN 9780374168520.
  • Living Weapon: Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. ISBN 9780374191993.
  • "Violins." African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, edited by Kevin Young. Library of America. 2020. ISBN 978-1-59853-666-9.
Criticism
Translation

Nonfiction

References
  1. McHenry, Eric (2013-01-25). "Poetry Chronicle (Published 2013)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  2. "Heaven". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  3. "Poetry Book Review: Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $23 (96p) ISBN 978-0-374-19199-3". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  4. "When Blackness Rhymes With Blackness | Dalkey Archive Press". Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  5. Lawrence, Andrew (2018-12-10). "A Book That Honors an Underrated Sport". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  6. Dillman, Lisa (2013-09-02). "Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth by Salvador Espriu". Translation Review. 87 (1): 108–110. doi:10.1080/07374836.2013.835140. ISSN 0737-4836. S2CID 171023416.
  7. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". www.whiting.org. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  8. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Rowan Ricardo Phillips". Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  9. "Heaven". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  10. "Nicholas Guillen Award". www.caribbeanphilosophicalassociation.org. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  11. Poetry Foundation (2020-11-16). "PEN America Awards Announced, Rowan Ricardo Phillips Wins in Poetry by Harriet Staff". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  12. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips Honored for Best Literary Sports Writing | Stony Brook Matters". news.stonybrook.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  13. "The Antiguans". Work in Progress. 2019-04-26. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  14. Foundation, Poetry (2020-11-16). "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  15. "Africana Studies". africana-studies.williams.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  16. "Advanced Poetry". Lewis Center for the Arts. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  17. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips | English Department". www.stonybrook.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  18. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  19. Brewbaker, Will. ""Stronger Than Steel": On Rowan Ricardo Phillips's "Living Weapon"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  20. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". The Night Heron Barks. 2020-05-29. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  21. "The World Is on Fire: Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips". The Rumpus.net. 2020-10-02. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  22. Academy of American Poets. "About Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Academy of American Poets". poets.org. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  23. Phillips, Rowan Ricardo (2017-10-30). "The End of the Tour: Tennis Stars in Twilight". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  24. Phillips, Rowan Ricardo (2019-02-26). "They Think They Know You, Lionel Messi". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  25. Phillips, Rowan Ricardo (2016-02-05). "Kings". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  26. Phillips, Rowan Ricardo (2020-10-28). "Looking Back on Baseball's Silent Season". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  27. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  28. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". The New Republic. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  29. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  30. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips". Friends of the Key West Library. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  31. Macdonald, Geoff (2018-11-28). "A Poet Who Loves Tennis Follows the Grand Tour, in Prose (Published 2018)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  32. "Basketball: Great Writing About America's Game | Library of America". www.loa.org. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  33. "@GaryLineker". Twitter. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  34. Kroll, Justin (2018-02-05). "'O.J.: Made in America' Director Boards Roberto Clemente Biopic (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  35. "Coco Helado (feat. Rowan Ricardo Phillips), by Spanglish Fly". Spanglish Fly. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  36. "Frank Ocean, Prince, Marvin Gaye, Madonna & More Will Soundtrack Netflix's 'She's Gotta Have It' Season 2". Billboard. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  37. "Announcing the 2012 L.A. Times Book Prize finalists". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2015-04-29.
  38. "2013 New Writers Award Winners". The Great Lakes Colleges Association. Retrieved 2015-04-29.
  39. "2013 Image Award Nominations". National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Archived from the original on 2015-01-28. Retrieved 2015-04-29.
  40. "2013 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry". PEN American Center. Retrieved 2015-04-29.
  41. "Rowan Ricardo Phillips, 2013 Winner in Poetry". Whiting Foundation. Retrieved 2015-04-29.
  42. "John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 2015 Fellows - United States and Canada" (PDF). John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2015-04-29.
  43. http://www.anisfield-wolf.org/books/heaven/
  44. "PEN America Literary Awards 2019 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 28 February 2019. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
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