CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN’S second book of poetry, Goat Funeral (Sheep Meadow, 2006) was awarded the Helen C. Smith Memorial Prize by the Texas Institute of Letters for the best book of poetry published in 2006.  His first book, After Greece, won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2001. Bakken is also co-translator of The Lions’ Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios (2006).  He received an MFA from the Writing Seminars of Columbia University and a PhD in literature and creative writing at University of Houston. 


“This is the best second book of poems I've read in a decade.”—Richard Howard

“Bakken is using all kinds of poetic arms to convery a complex, ambivalent vision spun between the joy of an afternoon in Greece and the dying of a cat. This is an admirable, rich collection of poems."—Adam Zagajewski