About Ralph Adamo
Mr. Adamo began teaching English at Xavier in Fall 2007, and has edited Xavier Review since Spring 2011. His six collections of poetry were all published by small presses, most recently the selected volume Waterblind from Portals Press in 2002; he won an National Endowment for the Arts award for poetry in 2003. Former editor New Orleans Review in the ‘90s and Barataria Review in the ‘70s), he has taught at most area universities and continues to work as a journalist. In the months following Katrina, he was awarded a Katrina Media Grant by the Open Society Institute to pursue the story of the radical changes being wrought in local public education. (Some of those stories can be found on the OSI website.)
Among his other books are two from Lost Roads Publishers, Sadness at the Private University (1977) and The End of the World (1979), and one from New Orleans Poetry Journal Press, Hanoi Rose (1989). His book-length poem (some of which has been published in New Orleans Review , as well as the anthology, Another South ) and a new manuscript, Sampling Time: Poems 2000-2010 , are currently seeking publishers.
In addition to the NEA, he has won poetry awards from the Louisiana Endowment for the Arts, and from the Faulkner Society. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities funded his summer institute on Twentieth Century Poetry and Arts Movements in 1998.
He was among the editors of a posthumous volume of poetry by Everette Maddox, American Waste (1994), and was editor of Maddox’s selected poems, I Hope It’s Not Over and Goodbye , in 2009.
Having lived in New Orleans most of his life, he has also done some ruminative writing about the city, one example of which can be found online in Big Bridge #14 . He is married to Kay Toca with whom he has a son, Jack, and a daughter Lily, both students at Lusher School.
BOOKS OF POETRY
The Tiger Who Spoke French
Why we Have Friends (Leatherfoot Printers, 1975)
Sadness at the Private University (Lost Roads Poetry Series, 1978)
The End of the World (Lost Roads Poetry Series, 1979)
Hanoi Rose (New Orleans Poetry Journal, 1989)
Waterblind (Portals Press, 2002)
