Career

Bensko has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The University of Alabama (1979) and a Ph.D. in 20th century poetry and narrative technique from Florida State University

Florida State University

The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...

 (1985). He was a student of Thomas Rabbitt in poetry and Barry Hannah

Barry Hannah

Howard Barry Hannah was an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi.The author of eight novels and five short story collections , Hannah worked with notable American editors and publishers such as Gordon Lish, Seymour Lawrence, and Morgan Entrekin...

 in fiction, and classmate of Clark Powell:

Our weekly workshops were simple - take the latest purple mimeographed worksheet of student's poems, and have everyone critique the poems. I once wrote a four-line poem that had an epigraph from Moby Dick that was almost an entire paragraph. I read the poem. Silence. Then everybody started laughing. It was that bad. Another student named John Bensko made a comment that broke everybody up: "This poem is a bit top-heavy."

Before coming to the University of Memphis

University of Memphis

The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....

, he taught at The University of Alabama

University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

, Old Dominion University

Old Dominion University

Old Dominion University is a state university located in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools...

, Rhodes College

Rhodes College

Rhodes College is a private, predominantly undergraduate, liberal arts college located in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Originally founded by freemasons in 1848, Rhodes became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in 1855. Rhodes enrolls approximately 1,700 students pursuing bachelor's and master's...

, and, as a Fulbright Professor in American Literature, at the University of Alicante

University of Alicante

The University of Alicante was established in 1979 on the basis of the Center for University Studies , which was founded in 1968. The University main campus is located in San Vicente del Raspeig/Sant Vicent del Raspeig, bordering the city of Alicante to the north...

, Spain. He has been the Coordinator of the MFA program at the U of Memphis and was Director of the River City Writers Series for the 2005-2006 season.

His work has appeared in Georgia Review, Iowa Review, New England Review, New Letters, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, "AGNI," "Critical Quarterly," "The Southern Review," The Southern Poetry Review," "Shenandoah," "Chelsea," "OnEarth," "Epoch," "The Gettysburg Review," "TriQuarterly," "Poet Lore," "The Journal," "Prairie Schooner," and many otther periodicals.

He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Memphis

University of Memphis

The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....

, along with his wife, the fiction writer Cary Holladay. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

.

Awards

• Yale Series of Younger Poetry Award
  Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
  The Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the first collection of a promising American poet...
  
  for 1981 (selected by Richard Hugo)
• McLeod-Grobe Poetry Prize for 2000

Selected works

• The Wild Horses of Asseateague Island, Poetry, May 1983
• The Lost Watch, The Kenyon Review, Winter 2004, Volume XXVI Number 1
• Union Sniper, Poetry Southeast, Spring 2006
• Persimmon, Chelsea, Verse Daily 2006
• Blind Sight, AGNI online, August 2007
• Revenge of the Weeds: Talking with Poet John Bensko, OnEarth podcast, June 25, 2008
• Wooden Floor; Our Side of the Tracks, Prairie Schooner - Volume 82, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp. 41–43

Ploughshares

• Dawn, Ploughshares, Winter 2006-7
• After A Day In the Country, Ploughshares, Spring 1989
• Growing Up on the Lively Art of Painting, Ploughshares, Spring 1989

Reviews

Sea Dogs is casual and deft, as if the stories were handed over by a brilliant friend who has nothing to prove but has seen it all.

From Publishers Weekly:

A veteran poet, Bensko has received the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and produced three books of verse (The Iron City; The Waterman's Children; Green Soldiers). He turns his attention to fiction in a debut story collection that is limpid and dreamlike at its best, but too often gloomy and detached. As the title suggests, nearly all 13 stories feature characters drawn to the ocean, whether by profession, disposition or circumstances.

Characters exhibit, and communicate, confusion. Hanging over them is an aura (as one title phrases it) of Missed Connections. The method generally works. The reader wanders in and out of lives, confessions, aberrations; flips through time; straddles periods. The point of view shifts. Though in places language remains resistant, the story beyond reach, these poems carry conviction.

• Poetic Proles:Rob Morris reviews Sea Dogs, American Book Review, Volume 25, Number 6, September/October 2004

• Sea Dogs (review), Steve Yarbrough, The Missouri Review - Volume 27, Number 2, Summer 2004, pp. 191–191

External references

• John Bensko, Poet of the Month, October 2005