Philip Jenks was born in North Carolina and grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia. Vocations to poetry and politics led him to Reed College, where he graduated in 1990. He then moved to Boston, living there for two years while completing a Master’s degree in creative writing at Boston University. His ongoing engagement with Appalachian culture and politics led him to the University of Kentucky, where he worked at the Appalachian Center. In 2002, Jenks received his doctorate in Political Science. He has studied under Herb Reid, Stanley Fish, Robert Pinsky, Derek Wolcott, and Susan Bordo. His dissertaion is entitled, “Foucault, Arendt, and the Norplant Condition in Liberal America: New Reproductive Technologies, Public Bodies, and Disciplinary Liberalism.” He currently is an assistant professor and Freshman Inquiry Coodinator in the University Studies program at Portland State University. He has published peoms in Chicago Review, LVNG, Rain City Review, Poetry New York, Cultural Society, Disclosure, and has published translations of Hoelderlin in Outlet. If you ask him nicely, he may show you the full-scale tattoo of Emily Dickinson on his back.
		home / season two