Judson Evans

Professor
Affiliated Departments
Liberal Arts and Sciences
Faculty Bio E-Mail
jevans@berklee.edu
Telephone
617-747-6635

For media inquiries, please contact Media Relations

After a tenure as director of liberal arts for Boston Conservatory from 1988 to 2015, Judson Evans is now a full-time professor in the Liberal Arts Department at Berklee College of Music.

He teaches two poetry workshops, Microcosm/Macrocosm and Experiments in Form & Collaboration, as well as two humanities electives, The Cave: Inquiry into the Origins of Art, Religion, and Philosophy and Crossing Cultures: Greece & Japan.

Career Highlights
  • Published poetry in Volt, Laurel Review, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Tuesday: An Art Project, Cutbank, Epoch, and Folio
  • Haiku have appeared in Cor van den Heuvel's Haiku Anthology, Journeys to the Interior, and Angelee Deodhar's Journeys 2017: An Anthology of International Haibun
  • Published a chapbook of his collected haibun Mortal Coil
  • Collaborative work with a wide range of artists and performers, including choreographers Sean Murphy, Julie Ince Thompson, and Chung-Fu Chang; composers Mohammed Fairouz, Rudolf Rohan, and, Marti Epstein
  • Chosen by master poet William J. Higginson as one of three judges for Bernard Lionel Einbond Renku Contest for Haiku Society of America in 2006, and chosen by Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Chair of the Creative Writing Program at Boston University, to act as a member of a panel discussing various aspects of poetry for Pinsky's MOOC, The Art of Poetry.
  • Off-the-Park Poetry Workshop/Salon at School of Images in New York City with acclaimed poet, art critic, and teacher/mentor John Yau (2005–2011)
  • Summer at Breadloaf School of English, Middlebury College
Awards
  • Recipient of grant from University of Ohio at Athens for a project involving an essay film with poetic text on the origins of landscape, set on Mont Ventoux in southern France (2013–16)
  • Named an Emerging Poet for the Academy of American Poets by acclaimed poet/critic John Yau; a selection of four poems with an essay on the body of work by Yau appeared in the Academy’s journal American Poet in 2007
  • Winner of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize for the poem Telemere in the Salt Hill Review in 2013
  • Winner of the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award for the haibun Window Washer, chosen by Molly Peacock for the Comstock Review in 2004
Education
  • M.A., Tufts University
  • B.A., Wilkes University
In Their Own Words

"Students have regularly spoken of the way my classes have stimulated their curiosity in aspects of culture, history, and art they hadn't encountered before. They have remarked on the ways projects and assignments have challenged them to synthesize their personal and professional skills and interests with aspects of reading, writing, and research. Many students in my poetry workshops have gone on to write, publish, and collaborate with other artists, bringing together their literary skills with their lives as composers, dancers, musicians, and actors."

"I have always viewed my academic studies as raw material for my own artistic work as a poet and have approached teaching as an extension of my belief that academic exploration can feed artistic inspiration and vice versa. For example, my curriculum for The Cave: Inquiry into the Origins of Art, Religion, and Philosophy was a direct outgrowth of the three years of reading and research, as well as travel, I did writing a book of poetry on Werner Herzog's documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. American poet Theodore Roethke said, 'A teacher is someone who conducts his education in public,' and I illustrate this principle in my teaching with passion and rigor. I believe in lifetime learning and following artistic impulses into in-depth reading and research."