Rosemary Willey grew up in southwestern Michigan in a family of eleven children. In her book of poems, Intended Place, she writes about the challenges to voice and identity that families inevitably present. Willey received an MFA from the Vermont College Writing Program. Intended Place was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa to win the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Crazyhorse, and other journals. She and her husband live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She also occasionally sings folk music (along with three of her brothers) in the string band Hickory Creek Revival.
Anthologies
Learning by Heart, Contemporary American Poetry about School
The Next of Us is About to be Born,
The Wick Poetry Series Anthology
In Celebration of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Wick Poetry Center
Commissioned Poems
“What We Recognize”
for the GVSU Alumni House Inauguration
“A Walk in the Woods”
for the Dedication of The Peter J. Barnes III Wildlife Preserve
Rosemary Willey’s book of poems, Intended Place, won the Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press.
The poems in Rosemary Willey’s Intended Place are flawless meditations on possibility and denial… From the very first few pages, we realize that this voice embodies empathy and to-the-point inquiry. She cannot keep her mind off the real things of this world, touching where it feels good and where it pains, always snapping the chanced wishbone, and we are more blessed and richer for her daring talent. – Yusef Komunyakaa
