Contact Information

Office: 4144 JFSB

Phone: 422-2998

Email: kimberly_johnson@byu.edu

Commonly Taught Courses Creative writing workshops and theory (Engl 218, 319, 419, 519, 617)
Renaissance literature (English 372, 382, 383, 385, 495, 620, 655)
Classics and the English literary tradition (Honors 303)

Semester Schedule: Winter 2012:

ENGL 495
TTH 12:05-1:20
2009 JKB

ENGL 669
T 5:10-7:45
4116 JFSB

Student Consultations:
T 1:30-5:00
And by appointment

Biography: Kimberly Johnson teaches courses in creative writing and in Renaissance literature. In both fields, her primary interest lies in lyric poetry. In critical work on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lyric, she has explored issues of form, aesthetics, religion, and gender, and the intersection of these concerns in the literature's cultural context. Her own poetry negotiates many of these same ideas as it confronts the limits of representation. She tries to impress upon her students the urgency of being accurate and specific, both as writers and as critics.

She has published two books of poetry, Leviathan with a Hook (Persea Books, 2002) and A Metaphorical God (Persea Books, 2008), and a translation of Virgil's Georgics: A Poem of the Land (Penguin Classics, UK 2009 and US 2011). She is also the editor of John Donne's Complete Sermons: The Electronic Archive (lib.byu.edu/dlib/donne) and (with Michael C. Schoenfeldt and Richard Strier) Divisions on a Ground: Essays in Renaissance Literature in Honor of Donald M. Friedman (2008). Her poetry, translations, and critical essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Slate, Yale Review, and Modern Philology.

Johnson's current projects include a scholarly book on eucharistic poetics, a verse translation of Hesiod's Works and Days, and a third collection of poetry, Uncommon Prayer. With her husband, the poet Jay Hopler, she is currently editing The Yale Anthology of the Devotional Lyric, which will be published in 2013.

Her awards include grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Utah Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Degrees: MA, Johns Hopkins U, 1995; MFA, U. of Iowa, 1997; PhD, U of California Berkeley, 2003

Interests: Poetry, Renaissance literature, poetic theory, classics, religious history

Links