Barbara Crooker

Barbara Crooker was born on November 21, 1945, in Cold Spring, New York, to Emil and Isabelle Poti. As a child, Crooker was an enthusiastic reader and enjoyed writing and illustrating stories in notebooks. In high school, she was the writer and editor for her school's newspaper. She received a BA in English from Rutgers University (1967) and then went on to complete her MS Ed at Elmira College (1975). She began writing poetry in the 1970s as a way to process personal loss and major life transitions.

Crooker was first inspired by poet Diane Wakoski. Crooker discovered Wakoski's poetry in The Eagle, a publication by Mansfield University in northern Pennsylvania. Crooker claims that Wakoski's poetry influenced much of her early work. At this time, Crooker wrote about family, birth, love, and loss, drawing on the hardship, joy, and bereavement she experienced as a mother. Her most widely reprinted poem, "The Lost Children," was first published in 1989 and has been widely reprinted in anthologies, online journals, and books on parenting and grief.

Crooker then moved to Corning, New York, where she met and married her second husband, Richard Crooker. Crooker’s family life, especially her experiences raising her children, deeply shaped the emotional and thematic heart of her poetry. In particular, her son David, diagnosed with autism at age two, inspired a series of poems that candidly reflect on the challenges and beauty of parenting a child with a disability. These poems, many of which appeared in her 2001 chapbook Ordinary Life, have been widely shared in parenting and disability-focused publications. The poems David inspired reflect on emotional issues involved with raising a disabled child and worrying about his future. "Ordinary Life," the title poem from Crooker's 2001 collection, was selected for publication by the Public Poetry Project of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book in 2004.

Throughout her career, Crooker has held over 20 residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as residencies at the Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France, and at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Ireland. She has authored more than 1,200 poems, with over 700 published in magazines and journals, including The Green Mountains Review, The Hollins Critic, The Christian Science Monitor, Smartish Pace, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, The Denver Quarterly, The Tampa Review, Poetry International, The Christian Century, and America. They have also been reprinted in nearly a dozen anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Good Poems for Hard Times (Viking Penguin), Boomer Girls (University of Iowa Press), and Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press).

Seven of her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on his National Public Radio (NPR) program The Writer's Almanac. Her work has also been featured on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Known internationally, Crooker's poetry has been translated into both German and Korean and has appeared in journals in England, Ireland, Italy, France, and New Zealand. She has read her work as part of the Poetry at Noon series at the Library of Congress and numerous poetry festivals.

In addition to her extensive publication in literary journals, Barbara Crooker has authored numerous books and chapbooks, including both independently published titles and those produced by boutique presses. Among her most recognized early works are The Lost Children (1989), Obbligato (1992), In the Late Summer Garden (1998), Ordinary Life (2001), and Greatest Hits, 1980–2002 (2003). Ordinary Life won the ByLine Chapbook Competition in 2001, and Impressionism earned the Grayson Books Chapbook Award in 2004.

Her first full-length poetry collection, Radiance (2005), was selected for the Word Press First Book Award and was later a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Of this collection, Crooker told Diane Lockward in an interview that it was “organized like a quilt patch,” with thematic sections exploring autism, aging, spirituality, long-term love, and ekphrastic responses to paintings, each poem offering a different perspective on light. Her second full-length book, Line Dance (2008), received the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. In More (2010), Crooker groups poems by subject, each linked by a nuanced interpretation of the word “more.” As she explains: “the hunger for more... the desire for more love... the need for more beauty... the reach for more of everything” (Lockward).

Crooker’s subsequent collections, Gold (2013), Small Rain (2014), Les Fauves (2017), and Some Glad Morning (2019), continue her engagement with joy and loss, often drawing on Impressionist imagery, reflections on aging, and the ephemeral nature of time. Her most recent full-length collection, Slow Wreckage, was released by Grayson Books in 2024. 

Throughout her career, Crooker has earned numerous honors. These include the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize, the 2006 Rosebud Ekphrastic Poetry Award, the 2004 W.B. Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and the 2003 “April Is the Cruelest Month” Award from Poets & Writers. She also received the 2000 New Millennium Writings Y2K Competition Award and the 1997 Karamu Poetry Award. Her collection The Book of Kells won the 2019 Best Poetry Book Award from Poetry by the Sea, while Some Glad Morning was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award from Jacar Press.

Barbara Crooker has been honored with three Creative Writing Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and received recognition from the National Education Association. Her work was also featured in the spoken word anthology Grow Old Along With Me—The Best is Yet to Be (Papier-Mâché Press), a finalist for the Grammy Award in the Spoken Word category.

An enduring voice in contemporary poetry, Crooker continues to contribute to the literary world through both instruction and publication. In 2023, she led “The Art of Writing About Art, Part 2,” an ekphrastic poetry workshop for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. In 2024, she returned to her hometown to teach poetry classes at her former elementary school, celebrating its 100th anniversary.

Crooker’s recent poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, One Art, and Wordpeace. Her poetry, known for its clarity, warmth, and reverence for art and nature, often explores themes of gratitude and the human condition. As she reflects: “We’re all flawed, and all glorious. The poems try to reflect that” (“Writing Matters”).