Matthew J. Spireng is a widely published, award-winning poet whose passion is to awaken people to the enjoyment poetry can bring to their lives.
His poetry is rich and accessible, thought-provoking and understandable, and, as R.H.W. Dillard says of Spireng’s latest book Good Work, “his poems ─ with their honesty, their good humor, their unruffled craft, their interior tension ─ bring, one by one, page by page, to each reader a new dawning of perception.”
Photo ©Steve Antonelli
Bio
Matt is the author of three full-length books of poems: the aforementioned Good Work, winner of the 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize, Evening Street Press 2020; What Focus Is, WordTech Communications, 2011; and Out of Body, 2006, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award, Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His chapbooks are: Clear Cut, a signed and numbered limited edition of his poems and photographs by Austin Stracke on which the poems are based, privately printed at Hampden-Sydney College, 2010; Young Farmer, 2007, Finishing Line Press; Encounters, 2005, Finishing Line Press; Just This, a signed and numbered limited-edition chapbook of his poems and photographs by Trey Price on which the poems are based, privately printed at Hampden-Sydney College, 2003; and Inspiration Point, 2002, winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition.
Since 1990, more than 1,200 of Matt’s poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines and in anthologies across the United States and have been recognized in numerous national contests including as winner of The MacGuffin’s 23rd Annual Poet Hunt Contest in 2018 and the 2015 Common Ground Review poetry contest for “Good Work,” the title poem of his latest collection. He is also an 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee. While a list of magazines and journals in nearly all of the 50 states that have published his work would be too long to include, these are just a few: North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Yankee, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Louisiana Literature, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, English Journal, Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, Blueline, Tar River Poetry, The Penn Review, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Concho River Review and The William & Mary Review.
Matt also takes great pleasure in presenting readings that entertain the audience, perhaps taking them on a roller coaster ride of emotions, or awakening memories and sensations they’d forgotten they have.
A resident of Lomontville in rural upstate New York, where he still cuts and splits wood to help heat his home, he holds an M.A. from Hollins College (now Hollins University) in Virginia and is a retired award-winning journalist.
Full-Length Titles
Good Work
“For many years, in many poems, Matthew Spireng has watched the world and himself with close and patient attention.”
—Henry Taylor
What Focus Is
“. . .well-crafted poems that reveal the poetry in the events of every day . . . .”
—R.H.W. Dillard
Out of Body
“(The) poems in Out of Body teach the heart to persevere, to cherish the surprising twists, the joy to be found in the journey.”
—Vivan Shipley