Walter Ancarrow

POET & PRACTITIONER OF IDEAS

USA

Spring 2026

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Contact Info

https://www.walterancarrow.com

BIOGRAPHY

Walter Ancarrow is the author of Etymologies (Omnidawn, 2023), a collection of poems in the form of an etymological dictionary that Cathy Park Hong called “glorious distillations of mischief and erudition.” He is also the editor, with an introduction, of The Selected Poems of John Whitworth, a career-spanning selection from the British poet’s eleven books (forthcoming 2026). Ancarrow is interested in colors, shapes, and questions of language, particularly the hidden social forces behind word use. In 2025, he received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry.

PROJECT

My manuscript in progress deconstructs communication systems that we learn as children—color, alphabet, number, shape—and then builds off the most basic units of these systems to create poetry (a group of monostichs each on a color in the 64 box of Crayola crayons, a series of twenty-six poems that use only one letter…). The result is a kind of instruction manual to what is possible. The project is a continuation of my first book, Etymologies (Omnidawn, 2023), an etymological dictionary that is also a work of lyrical poetry looking at the far-flung origins of English. Whereas Etymologies looks at language on the word level, this new manuscript focuses on smaller units of language. While in Fes, I will be drawing from the city’s use of three writing systems (Arabic, Latin, Tifinagh), its long history of various peoples finding ways to communicate, and its lively streets where one hears languages from all over the world. The Mediterranean, Christianity, and Islam all feature prominently in my work.