Claire Bateman Reads at the 2006 Ohio University Spring Literary Festival

Critics describe Claire Bateman's poetry as a striving toward the spiritual, but in her vision the spiritual part of reality is not a restful realm far away; instead it is a busy, noisy, disturbed and disturbing excitement which intersects constantly with physical experience in countless ways. Mark Halliday describes the sensation of reading Bateman's poetry in terms of an American artistic foremother: "It's like the feeling you have reading Emily Dickinson—the sense of an important discovery awaiting you if you will ponder the poem; you may be puzzled, but you won't be merely entertained or teased."

She is the author of five books of poetry: The Bicycle Slow Race, Friction, At The Funeral of the Ether, Clumsy, and the 2005 release Leap. She has also received awards from the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Pushcart Prize. She has taught at Clemson University and Chattanooga State University, and at summer writing conferences such as Bread Loaf and Mount Holyoke. She currently teaches at The Fine Arts Center in Greenville, South Carolina, a public high school for the arts.

List of Works:

Leap (2005)
Clumsy (2003)
Friction (1998)
At the Funeral of the Ether (1998)
The Bicycle Slow Race (1991 )

Awards:

Surdna Foundation Fellowship (2005)
Pushcart Prize in Poetry (2000) (Nominated annually 1993-2005)
New Millennium Writings Poetry Prize (1998)
Individual Artist Fellowship: Literary, Tennessee Arts Commission (1996)

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