The Accidental Poet
Executive Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars Mark Wunderlich is the 2026 Hal Prize poetry judge. He spoke with Door County Pulse about poetry and publishing.
Reports Door County Pulse:
"Though Mark Wunderlich calls the East Coast home, his poetry often conjures images of the Midwest he grew up in: the farms, the snow, the neighbors and the many other people and places that we who call it home are very familiar with. Within this setting, he tackles questions about life and death, the human condition, and God. He writes about the discoveries he makes tearing up a house, about a bat being a bat, about selling his family farm. His work is eloquent, humorous, haunting and captivating.
"Wunderlich’s first book, The Anchorage, published in 1999, earned the Lambda Literary Award, and since then, he has received many prizes, fellowships and residencies. This past January, he published his fourth book of poetry, God of Nothingness. Wunderlich is an educator, reviewer, speaker and this year’s Hal Prize poetry judge.
"We corresponded about his accidental path to poetry, the refuge he finds in a good poem and why publishing isn’t necessarily the great reward of writing that it appears to be."