Thomas Swiss is an American poet and writer. He taught at Drake University and the University of Iowa before teaching at the American University of Paris and the University of Minnesota.[1]
Swiss grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, mostly in Aurora, Illinois, where his father had an optometric practice. He graduated from the University of Illinois-Urbana, moved to Nottingham, England and returned to Illinois to work for the National Council of Teachers of English. In 1976, Swiss went to the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and earned an M.F.A. in creative writing. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and published his first book of poems, Measure, with the University of Alabama Press. Swiss' second book, Rough Cut, was published by the University of Illinois Press.
Swiss' poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The American Scholar, Boston Review, AGNI, and the Iowa Review. His collaborative new media poems and literary projects have been exhibited in museums and art shows, including shows at the School of Visual Arts, New York; The British Academy, UK; the Transmediale Festival, Berlin; and the South By Southwest New Media Festival, Austin TX.
Swiss' critical articles have appeared in the Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Popular Music, Postmodern Culture, Current Musicology, and The New England Review. His book reviews have been published in The New York Times Book Review, Contemporary Visual Arts, and other magazines.
Swiss has authored critical articles and book chapters, and edited or co-edited nine books including New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories;Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World; The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory : Magic, Metaphor, Power; and a collection of essays on the topic of the imaginaries and materialities of the mobile Internet.
