Jerry Bradley

Early years

Jerry Bradley was born in Jacksboro, Texas, in 1948, the son of Carmon Jackson Bradley, a career U.S. Army veteran, and Beatrice Zella Hale Bradley. He spent his early youth in various military towns, including Munich and Frankfort, Germany, and Camp Bullis near San Antonio, where his father was range commander. He then moved with his parents and two older siblings to Mineral Wells, Texas, following his father's retirement in 1956.

Bradley graduated from Mineral Wells High School in 1965 and attended Midwestern University (now Midwestern State University) in Wichita Falls as a member of the Honors Program, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1969. At Midwestern he was student body president (1968–69) editor of the student newspaper, The Wichitan, (1967–68), and a prize-winning intercollegiate debater inducted in 1967 into Pi Kappa Delta, the national forensics honor society. After graduation from Midwestern, Bradley enrolled in the graduate English program at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, where he earned his M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1975.

Career

After receiving his Ph.D., Bradley became an assistant professor at Boston University. In 1976 he was recruited by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) in Socorro, where he became chair of the Department of Humanities in 1984. At New Mexico Tech, with Professor John Rothfork, he founded New Mexico Humanities Review in 1978 and continued as editor for the next seventeen years until 1993. While in New Mexico, Bradley also published his first volume of poetry, Simple Versions of Disaster, which received critical praise in numerous reviews (see Reviews below). Bradley is listed in the Handbook of Texas Online among poets who have “written verse attempting to come to grips with the specific local facts of Texas culture and history.”

In 1993 Bradley became Dean of Humanities at Indiana University Southeast. While in Indiana he wrote The Movement: British Poets of the 1950s, a critical study of nine English writers: Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, D. J. Enright, Robert Conquest, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Donald Davie, Thom Gunn, and John Holloway. He has also published academic papers on Wallace Stevens, William Wordsworth, Samuel Beckett Edgar Allan Poe, Philip Larkin, Alan Sillitoe, David Wagoner, and others.

Bradley returned to his home state of Texas to chair the Department of English at West Texas A&M University in Canyon. In his first year there he founded the West Texas A&M summer writing program, which continued under his leadership until 2001. Also while at West Texas, Bradley became poetry editor of Concho River Review, a bi-annual literary magazine sponsored by the English Department at Angelo State University. In 1999 Bradley was inducted into the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters.

In 2001 Bradley became Dean of Graduate Studies, Associate Vice-President of Research, and Professor of English at Lamar University in Beaumont. In 2007 he stepped down as dean to write and teach full-time at Lamar. He actively promotes literature by participating in poetry festivals and workshops and was Guest Poet at the 2012 Houston Poetry Fest. Bradley's graduate and undergraduate students have won writing awards, including two top student awards in the 2012 Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers competition. The Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association honored Bradley in 2000 by naming the annual prize for the top graduate student in creative writing the Jerry Bradley Award.

Bradley is active in various professional literary organizations and has served in leadership positions in many of them, including the Texas Institute of Letters (executive council, 2002-2007); the South Central Modern Language Association (chair, regional fiction, 1991; science fiction, 1993; southern literature, 2001; creative writing, 2002; regional poets, 2013); Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers (president, 1995–97), the Popular Culture Association (chair, fiction 2004–present); and Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association (president, 1998-2000 and chair, creative writing, 1992–present); Conference of College Teachers of English (president, 2009); and the Austin Poetry Society (judge, The Orpheus Award, 2007, The President’s Award, 2010, and The Neill Megaw Memorial Award, 2012).

In addition to Pi Kappa Delta, Bradley is a member of several other honorary societies. He was inducted into Phi Beta Delta, the international honor society for scholars, in 1996 and the international collegiate honor society for students of English, Sigma Tau Delta, in 2003.

Bradley's poetry has been published in numerous literary journals including New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, Southern Humanities Review, Descant, and American Literary Review. He also has been featured in the Texas Poetry Calendar; his poem “Flying with Crows” won second place in the 2010 calendar. Electronic journals in which Bradley’s poems appear include Right Hand Pointing, Chest, SCOL: Scholarship and Creativity Online, A Journal of the Texas College English Association, Poetry Magazine, and Weber Studies. Bradley’s poem “How the Big Thicket Got Smaller” (originally published in Southwestern Review in 1981) is highlighted on the home page of the Big Thicket Association’s website. In 2011 Bradley was the featured poet in Red River Review.

Although Jerry Bradley is known most widely for his poetry, he is also a fiction writer. Anthologies and magazines containing Bradley’s short fiction include: A Shared Voice, Texas Told 'Em, Texas Short Stories, and New Texas 95.

The 2012 Texas Poet Laureate, Jan Seale, wrote: "Bradley's Poetry often speaks in dazzling contradictions yet is capable in turn of bleak lament, playfulness, and deep-down unabashed love. In a poetry world where posturing and words-for-words' sake are too often the norm, Jerry Bradley's poems, in their quiet artistry, make sense and foster deep emotions. He shows the tenderness of the human predicament, pressing wit and chutzpah into service as necessary solace."

Personal life

Jerry Bradley currently resides in Beaumont, Texas, with his wife, the writer Barrie Scardino Bradley.

Honors and awards

Works

Further reading

Reviews