Denise Levertov was born in England and educated entirely at home. Her first poem was published in Poetry Quarterly at the age of seventeen. Her first book, The Double Image, was written between the time she was seventeen and twenty-one and published in 1946. Levertov immigrated to the United States in 1948, settling in New York City. There, Levertov published her first American book, Here and Now, in 1956. With her book, With Eyes at the Back of our Heads (1959), Levertov established herself as an important American poet. Levertov worked as the poetry editor for The Nation magazine as well as for Mother Jones magazine.
Some of her other published works include: The Sorrow Dance (1967), Freeing the Dust (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Tesserae (1995), Poems 1968-1972 (1987), Breathing the Water (1987), A Door in the Hive (1989), Evening Train (1992), and The Sands of the Well (1996).
Levertov has over 20 books of poetry, criticisms, and translations, in addition to editing several anthologies. A few of her many achievements include the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Frost Medal, the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Lannan Award, a Catherine Luck Memorial Grant, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Denise Levertov died from complications of lymphoma in December 1997.
Her poems “Sheep in the Weeds,” “Threat,” and “In Question” appeared in Issue 7.2 Summer 1995. Transformation of the Experienced: a Craft Interview with Denise Levertov was featured in Issue 8.1 Winter/Spring 1996.
