George Wallace has captivated audiences and critics alike since he
began writing and performing his poetry more than 30 years ago. Regarded
as one of the most prolific poets on the New York City scene today, he
presents dozens of readings every year throughout North America, England
and Europe. Currently writer in residence at the Walt Whitman
Birthplace, he is winner of the CW Post Poetry Prize, Blue Light Poetry
Prize, Poetry Kit Best Book Award, and has been named Grand Prize winner
at the Ditet e Naimit Internationally Poetry Festival in Tetovo,
Macedonia. In 2018 he will be recipient of the Alexander The Great Gold
Medal Prize, the first American to win this Greek award.
Two time Pushcart Prize nominee and four-time NYPA Writer of the Year
nominee, he was named first Poet Laureate for Suffolk County NY in 2003
and National Beat Festival laureate for 2015.
A leading practitioner of the performance-oriented "Post-Beat" genre,
Wallace’s work has been praised for its Whitmanian breadth, its
fresco-like freshness, and its merging of bop prosody with surreal
commentary and the expansive American voice.
In America, he has performed at the San Francisco Beat Museum, Woody
Guthrie Festival, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, John Steinbeck Center,
Gordon Parks Museum, Pollock-Krasner House, Sapphofest; In Europe and
the UK, such locations as Odradek, Shakespeare & Co, Robert Burns
Museum, the Dylan Thomas Centre, Orpheus Festival and the Festival
D’Avignon. He’s collaborated with Levon Helm, Peter Max, Maddy Prior,
Thurston Moore and Donovan. In 2007 he was named a “Next Generation
Beat” by the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival committee.
Editor of Poetrybay and co-editor of Great Weather for Media he is
author of thirty-one chapbooks, including Poppin Johnny (Three Rooms
Press ‘09), EOS: Abductor of Men (Three Rooms Press ‘12), Simple Blues
with a Few Intangibles (Foothills Press ’16) and Smashing Rock and
Straight as Razors (Blue Light Press ‘17).
Wallace’s work has been translated into over two dozen languages and
books published in bilingual editions in Italian and Albanian.
A student of W. D. Snodgrass (Syracuse University), Marvin Bell and
David St. John (Pacific University), he has been awarded a residency at
the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC and is currently an
adjunct professor of English at Pace University in Manhattan.
