Poet Monica Youn describes Claire Wahmanholm as “a visionary of the concrete, the stippled and slippery textures of the precarious present and the unthinkably imminent.” Wahmanholm’s poems are defined by a spirited sense of play alongside profound sadness for an ailing planet, chronicling what it means to be the parent of small children while simultaneously confronting climate grief head-on.
Wahmanholm received her BA from UW-Madison, her MFA from the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University, and her PhD from the University of Utah. Her debut collection, Wilder (Milkweed Editions), won the 2018 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award. Her second collection, Redmouth, was published with Tinderbox Editions in 2019. Her third collection, Meltwater (Milkweed Editions, 2023) was a finalist for the 2024 Minnesota Book Award and the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a 2025 National Book Foundation Science + Literature selection. She was a 2020-2021 McKnight Writing Fellow, and the winner of the 2022 Montreal International Poetry Prize for her poem “Glacier.” She lives in the Twin Cities.
Claire Wahmanholm is the 2026 Tammis Day Poet-in-Residence.
Wahmanholm’s reading will be followed by conversation with Jen Jabaily-Blackburn in Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, March 24 at 7 p.m. Free & open to the public. Books will be sold and a signing will follow. Livestream also available on the BDPC YouTube page.
