Loisa Fenichell
Ph.D. Candidate
What I do
I focus most primarily on studying and writing poetry. The poems I write tend to be lyric in nature -- they are typically written in the first person (rooted in and told by the lyric "I") and incorporate innovative imagery and metaphor so as to excavate certain seemingly elusive feelings that are inherent to the human condition: e.g., loneliness and desire. My poems also often incorporate an addressee -- some "you" figure -- in addition to a first person speaker. Finally, I am quite fascinated by similes -- and so use them rather often -- and by how they are at once almost dissociative, working within the language of "différance" (a term coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida), yet simultaneously work to do the opposite, to associate, to liken two seemingly dissimilar objects with one another.
Professional Biography
Loisa Fenichell’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and has been featured or is forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, "all these urban fields," was published by nothing to say press and her collection, "Wandering in all directions of this earth," which was a Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize finalist in 2021 and 2022, was the winner of the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize, selected by Yale Younger Poets Prize winner Eduardo C. Corral, and is forthcoming from Ghost Peach Press at the end of September, 2023. She is the winner of the 2021 Bat City Review Editors' Prize, has been a finalist for Narrative Magazine’s 2021 30 Below contest, a runner-up for Tupelo Quarterly's Tupelo Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the Dorianne Laux / Joe Millar prize. She has received support from Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop and has recently completed an M.F.A. program in Poetry at Columbia University. She is now a Ph.D. student in English and Creative Writing at University of Denver.
