Name Leo Connellan | Role Poet | |
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Died February 22, 2001, Sprague, Connecticut, United States Books Crossing America, The clear blue lobster-water country | ||
connellan poems 093
Leo Connellan (November 30, 1928 – February 22, 2001) was an American poet born in Portland, Maine. He grew up in Rockland, Maine, spent much of his life in the environs of New York City, and lived at the time of his death in Sprague, Connecticut. He spent considerable time traveling in the United States between the ages of 19 and 36, taking work as a salesman after his daughter was born.
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Connellan's rough, "everyman" lyricism won him the admiration of such poet-critics as Karl Shapiro, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, David B. Axelrod and other major voices of the twentieth century. Connellan won the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and served as Connecticut's second Poet Laureate from 1996 until his death. His duties in this post were little defined, but Connellan said he saw promoting poetry in schools and supporting new writers as among his responsibilities. From 1987 until the time of his death, he was poet-in-residence for the Connecticut State University System. Connellan had himself attended the University of Maine. He was designated one of Maine's most prominent poets in the Maine Literary Hall of Fame.
Connellan took among his themes the fishing and lobstering industries in Maine, and the lives of New York commuters. His work featured in anthologies, including Wesley McNair's The Maine Poets: An Anthology of Verse, and the Curbstone Press's Poetry like bread anthology of "poets of the political imagination."