Scott Coffel’s first book of poetry, Toucans in the Arctic, was published in the summer of 2009 by Etruscan Press. In April 2010, “Toucans in the Arctic” was honored by the Poetry Society of America as the recipient of its 2010 Norma Farber First Book Award. He was born in New York City, and educated at York College, a senior college of The City University of New York, and at SUNY-Oneonta. After several years of working in Seattle, Washington, he attended the Iowa Writers Workshop, receiving an MFA in 1995.

He currently resides in Iowa City with his wife and son, where he directs the Hanson Center for Technical Communication in The University of Iowa’s College of Engineering. His poems have appeared in Salmagundi, Ploughshares, Paris Review, Antioch Review, The American Scholar, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and elsewhere. He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow for the summer of 2009.

Find out how to interact with Scott on his author page.

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“In this long-awaited first collection, Toucans in the Arctic, Scott Coffel writes, ‘When I see a woman at the Cottage Bakery/immersed in Ulysses or The Brothers Karamzov/my desires align themselves in neat rows/for the march into liberated Paris…’ Of wide reference and deep thought, of language taut and somehow new, these are 21st Century poems of joy, rage, erudition, wry humor, monumental tenderness. You will remember the day you discovered this book.” – Suzanne Cleary

Toucans in the Arctic is an inspired truant from any number of poetical schools. In this lyric case study of tumult and tranquility, the poet, tour pamphlet in hand, wanders through the national park of the psyche, noting surfeits of beauty and ruin as he scrambles across the eerie landscapes of identity and marriage.

In April 2010, “Toucans in the Arctic” was honored by the Poetry Society of America as the recipient of its 2010 Norma Farber First Book Award.

Publication date: May 2009

Read an excerpt of Toucans in the Arctic.