Barrett Watten

Barrett Watten (born October 3, 1948) is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets.

Since 1994, Watten has taught modernism and cultural studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. Other areas of research include postmodern culture and American literature; poetics; literary and cultural theory; visual studies; the avant-garde; and digital literature. He is married to the poet Carla Harryman; their son, Asa, was born in 1984.

Overview

Born in Long Beach, California, Watten graduated from highschool in Oakland, California, and attended MIT and then UC Berkeley, where he took an AB in Biochemistry in 1969. It was there he met poets Robert Grenier and Ron Silliman and studied with Josephine Miles, who recommended him to the Iowa Writers' Workshop where he received an MFA in English (Program of Creative Writing) in 1972. While at Iowa, Watten self-published and printed his first collection Radio Day in Soma City (1971) in a letterpress volume, unpaginated (25pp. approx.) in an edition of 75 copies, and began co-editing This with Grenier.