Erika Meitner

Biography

Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), which was the winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently a professor of English at Virginia Tech. Her newest book, Useful Junk, is forthcoming (BOA Editions, 2022). 

See Work

PHOTOGRAPHY / Summer 2021

Reimagining Magic City

Photography by Anna Maria Barry-Jester ,  Essay and Poems by Erika Meitner

Miami’s Built Environment at the Crossroads
ESSAYS / Fall 2016

RNC CLE

By Erika Meitner ,  Photography by Ryan Spencer Reed

Erika Meitner’s poetry and prose, combined with photography from Ryan Spencer Reed, take us inside the city of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention.

Photography by Ryan Spencer Reed
ESSAYS / Spring 2011

This is Not a Requiem for Detroit

By Erika Meitner ,  Photography by Ryan Spencer Reed

I was born in Queens in 1975—the year of the infamous New York Post cover “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” when New York City was about to declare municipal bankruptcy, and the federal government was desperately trying to divorce urban America...
POETRY / Spring 2010

Elegy with Construction Sounds, Water, Fish

By Erika Meitner

A nail gun fires into wooden scaffolding up the hill—
the skeleton of a roof unfolding above the trees.
Rat tat tat. Bunk bunk bunk. There is music,