Andrea Rexilius is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Sister Urn (Sidebrow Books, Spring 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine Editions, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks, Séance (Coconut Books, 2014), To Be Human (Horseless Press, 2010), and Afterworld (above/ground press, 2020). She earned a B.A. in English from Sonoma State University (2002), an M.F.A. in Poetry from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005), and a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Denver (2010). Andrea is Co-Director, and Core Faculty in Poetry, for the Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing at Regis University. She also teaches in the Poetry Collective at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver.
Mentor Statement
As a mentor I pay attention to the unique ways in which the form and content of a writer’s work coalesce. By looking closely at the decisions a writer has made about word choice, line breaks, and form, I seek to engage with the poem and the poet on both the practical and hermeneutical level of writing. I believe in reading widely from a range of aesthetic and cultural backgrounds and I assign essays and writing prompts along with semester reading lists. I specialize in documentary poetics, serial poems, and hybrid forms.
