Colette Inez
Inez reading her poetry atJuilliard
Born	(1931-06-03)June 3, 1931 Brussels,Belgium
Died	January 16, 2018(2018-01-16) (aged 86)
Education	Hunter College
Occupations	poet,academic
Employer	Columbia University (1983–present)

Colette Inez (June 3, 1931 – January 16, 2018) was an American poet and a faculty member atColumbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She published ten poetry collections and won theGuggenheim Fellowship,Rockefeller Fellowship, and twoNational Endowment for the Arts (NEA Fellowships) and twoPrizes and many other awards. Her memoir,The Secret of M. Dulong, was released in 2008 by TheUniversity of Wisconsin Press.^[1]

Born on June 23, 1931, as the love child of a French scholar and a French-American priest inBrussels, Colette Inez spent her early years in a Belgian Catholic orphanage, arriving in America as a pretended orphan at age eight at the start of World War II. Her adolescence was spent under the foster care of an alcoholic and abusive family inLong Island, New York.^[2][3]

She graduated fromHunter College.

Her first book,The Woman Who Loved Worms (1972), was adapted into a dance performance by the Saeko Ichinohe Dance Company. Five of her poems were used as the lyrics of a song cycle,Miz Inez Sez, featured onPulitzer Prize winning composerDavid Del Tredici’s albumSecret Music (2002):^[2] "Alive and Taking Names," "The Happy Child," "Good News! Nilda is Back," and "Chateauneuf du Pape, the Pope's Valet Speaks" (all from her 1993 collectionGetting Under Way: New and Selected Poems), as well as "The Beckoning" (first published in theNew Orleans Review in 1999).

She has taught atBucknell University,Ohio University,Denison University,State University of New York (Stony Brook),Hunter College,University of Tennessee (Knoxville),The New School and started teaching atColumbia University in 1983 starting theColumbia University School of General Studies and subsequently as a lecturer in the university's Undergraduate Writing Program.

Colette continued writing and reciting poetry up until her death. She died on January 16, 2018.^[5]

• The Woman Who Loved Worms, Doubleday, 1972.
• Alive and Taking Names. Ohio University Press, 1977.
• Eight Minutes from the Sun. Saturday Press, 1983.
• Family Life, Story Line Press, 1992

• 

  Getting Underway: New & Selected Poetry, Story Line Press, 1993.
• Naming the Moons. Press of Appletree Alley, 1994.
• Clemency, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998.
• Spinoza Doesn't Come Here Anymore,Melville House Publishing, 2004.ISBN 978-0-9749609-1-3.
• The Secret of M. Dulong, University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.ISBN 0-299-21420-6.Excerpts
• For Reasons of Music^[6]

• 1985:Guggenheim Fellowship^[7]

• Colette Inez Page atColumbia University
• Colette Inez, Biography and Poems atPoetry Foundation
• The Poetry Worm: A Portrait of Colette Inez by Dennis Bernstein atTulane University
• [2] atAcademy of American Poets

• 1931 births
• 2018 deaths
• American memoirists
• Belgian emigrants to the United States
• Columbia University faculty
• Hunter College alumni
• Rockefeller Fellows
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellows
• American women poets
• American women memoirists
• Memoirists from New York (state)

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