C. S. Giscombe (born 1950Dayton, Ohio) is an African-Americanpoet, essayist, and professor of English atUniversity of California, Berkeley.^[1]

A graduate ofSUNY at Albany andCornell University where he earned degrees, he was editor ofEpoch magazine in the 1970s and 1980s. He has taught atCornell University,Syracuse University,Illinois State University, andPennsylvania State University.^[2]As of 2024, he teaches atUniversity of California, Berkeley.^[3]

His work has appeared inCallaloo,^[4]Chicago Review,Hambone,Iowa Review,Boundary 2,Paris Review, etc.. Giscombe’s honors and awards include the Stephen Henderson Award in Poetry, an American Book Award, and the Carl Sandburg Prize. He has been the recipient as well of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, and the Canadian Embassy. There have been a plethora of acknowledgments throughout Giscombe's career.^[5]

Giscombe has also worked as a taxi driver, a hospital orderly, and a railroad brakeman.^[6] He acknowledges his childhood fascination with trains as having an influence in his writing, noting that the railroad is "not sentimental...continuous...intimately connected to features of land and water."^[7]

• 1998 Carl Sandburg Award forGiscome Road.
• 2008American Book Award forPrairie Style^[8]
• 2010 Stephen Henderson Award.
• Fellowships and grants from the Canadian Embassy to the United States, the Fund for Poetry, the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, etc.

• Negro Mountain. University of Chicago Press. 2023.ISBN 0226829715.
• Similarly. Dalkey Archive Press. 2023.ISBN 1628973188.
• Train Music. (with Judith Margolis). Omnidawn Press. 2021.ISBN 978-1632430885.
• Border Towns. Dalkey Archive Press. 2016.ISBN 1564787656.
• Ohio Railroads. Omnidawn Press. 2014.ISBN 1890650749.
• Prairie Style. Dalkey Archive Press. 2008.ISBN 9781564785138.
• Inland. Leroy Chapbooks. 2001.
• Into and Out of Dislocation. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/ North Point. 2001.ISBN 978-0-7567-6662-7.
• Two Sections from "Practical Geography." Diæresis Press. 1999.
• Giscome Road. Dalkey Archive Press. 1998.ISBN 978-1-56478-184-0.
• Here. Dalkey Archive Press. 1994.ISBN 978-1-56478-338-7.
• At Large. St. Lazaire Press. 1989.
• Postcards. Ithaca House. 1977.ISBN 0878860894.

• "Prairie Style: An interview with C.S. Giscombe",Poetry Foundation
• "C.S. Giscombe",Electronic Poetry Center
• "C.S. Giscombe",PennSound
• "Review ofGiscome Road" inSamizdat

• Living people
• American male poets
• University at Albany, SUNY alumni
• Cornell University alumni
• Cornell University faculty
• Syracuse University faculty
• Illinois State University faculty
• Pennsylvania State University faculty
• University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
• 1950 births
• African-American poets
• Writers from Dayton, Ohio
• American Book Award winners
• American taxi drivers
• 21st-century African-American writers
• 20th-century African-American writers
• African-American male writers

• Articles with short description
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