Mark Gibbons

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Poet Laureate of Montana, 2021-2023

Mark Gibbons earned a BA in English and psychology and an MFA in creative writing, both from the University of Montana. 

Gibbons’s first chapbook of poems, Something Inside Us, was self- published in 1995, and a second, Circling Home, won the Scattered Cairns Press chapbook competition in 1999. He is also the author of the collections mostly cloudy (FootHills Publishing, 2020); The Imitation Blues (FootHills Publishing, 2017); Shadowboxing (FootHills Publishing, 2014); Forgotten Dreams (FootHills Publishing, 2012); blue horizon (Two Dogs Press, 2007); and Connemara Moonshine (Camphorweed Press, 2002). He is the coauthor, with Appalachian poet Michael Revere, of War, Madness, & Love (R & R Publishing, 2008), a collaborative collection of poems. Mauvaises Herbes (Weeds), a bilingual translation of Gibbons’s poems into French, was published by propos2editions in 2009. He is the editor of two poetry collections: Summer Lightning by Marylor Wilson (Drumlummon Institute, 2019) and Moving On: The Last Poems of Ed Lahey (Drumlummon Institute, 2018). 

Gibbons established Blind Horses Press in 2011. In 2021, Gibbons became the editor of the Montana Poets Series for FootHills Publishing. In the same year, he was appointed the 2021–23 Montana poet laureate. Gibbons lives in Missoula, where he writes and teaches poetry.