Laynie Browne


Laynie Browne is an American poet. Her work explores notions of silence and the invisible, through the re-contextualization of poetic forms, such as sonnets, tales, letters, psalms ''and others.

Life

Laynie Browne received her M.F.A. from Brown University in 1990. She was a member of the Subtext collective, Seattle, and The Ear Inn in New York City.
Browne has worked as an arts educator in public K–12 schools, with a focus on poetry. She has taught at University of Washington, Mills College, and at the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona. Currently, she is a professor of creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Browne also serves as a mentor in the Afghan Women's Writing Project.
Her work has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, Conjunctions, Fence, Monkey Puzzle, Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, Poet’s Choice. She is co-editor of I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women and is currently editing an anthology of original essays on the Poet's Novel. Browne's other current project, You Envelop Me, utilizes the elegy to investigate birth and loss within the context of the mourning process. “Attempts to illuminate once-hidden meanings are points of perforation, punctures in the fabric of writing,” says Browne. “I consider form as a container, lens, garment, dwelling, and means of locomotion.”
She lives in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two young sons.

Awards

Laynie has a very distinct writing style that is influenced by flora and fauna and being in the present. Her work brings into it the past by linking it to the present. When she was speaking she told us that she doesn't view time traditionally – for her, time isn't linear but kind of jumps all over the place. The one thing that firmly stands however, is that all you have is the present because the past is done and you may not live to see the future.
“It’s a stunner and a delight. A pure dose of heady oxygen” and “... an icon for the generation of poets who are about to show up.” - Ron Silliman on Daily Sonnets