Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this episode, the Burgess Foundation's Andrew Biswell talks to Emily Skillings, editor of a posthumous collection of poems by the seminal American poet John Ashbery, titled Parallel Movement of the Hands.
John Ashbery was one of the most celebrated American poets of the twentieth century. He is perhaps best known for his 1975 collection Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which won three major American prizes: the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The earlier book, Some Trees, published in 1956, was selected by WH Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Over the course of his career, he was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and was a MacArthur Fellow from 1985 to 1990. In 2012, he was presented with a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. Ashbery died in 2017 at the age of ninety.
Emily Skillings is a poet, editor and creative writing teacher based in Brooklyn, New York, where she also worked as John Ashbery’s assistant between 2010 and 2017. She received her MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and she currently teaches creative writing at Yale, NYU and Columbia. She is also a member of the Belladonna Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective, small press and event series. Her first collection of poetry, ‘Fort Not’, was called ‘fabulously eccentric, hypnotic, and hypervigilant’ by Publisher’s Weekly. For more information on Emily, visit emilyskillings.com
Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works by John Ashbery, is available now from Carcanet. For more information visit: bit.ly/AshberyAtCarcanet
For more information about Anthony Burgess, and to find out how you can support the Burgess Foundation, visit anthonyburgess.org
If you have enjoyed this podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
In this episode, the Burgess Foundation's Andrew Biswell talks to Emily Skillings, editor of a posthumous collection of poems by the seminal American poet John Ashbery, titled Parallel Movement of the Hands.
John Ashbery was one of the most celebrated American poets of the twentieth century. He is perhaps best known for his 1975 collection Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which won three major American prizes: the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The earlier book, Some Trees, published in 1956, was selected by WH Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Over the course of his career, he was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and was a MacArthur Fellow from 1985 to 1990. In 2012, he was presented with a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. Ashbery died in 2017 at the age of ninety.
Emily Skillings is a poet, editor and creative writing teacher based in Brooklyn, New York, where she also worked as John Ashbery’s assistant between 2010 and 2017. She received her MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and she currently teaches creative writing at Yale, NYU and Columbia. She is also a member of the Belladonna Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective, small press and event series. Her first collection of poetry, ‘Fort Not’, was called ‘fabulously eccentric, hypnotic, and hypervigilant’ by Publisher’s Weekly. For more information on Emily, visit emilyskillings.com
Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works by John Ashbery, is available now from Carcanet. For more information visit: bit.ly/AshberyAtCarcanet
For more information about Anthony Burgess, and to find out how you can support the Burgess Foundation, visit anthonyburgess.org
If you have enjoyed this podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
