April 20, 2025

Bobby Elliott

Bobby Elliott

Bobby Elliott is an award-winning poet and teacher. His debut collection of poems, The Same Man, was selected by Nate Marshall as the winner of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Raised in New York City, he earned his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, where he was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow. His writing has appeared in BOMB, The Cortland Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, Smartish Pace and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and sons.

How can I blame you
then or now
for clinging
to your mother's
warmth, unceasing
light?

I respond to a deep impulse – probably the deepest one I know – to speak up, to return, to relive. This, to me, feels like the essential work of the heart.