Robert Eric Shoemaker is a poet and interdisciplinary artist. Eric has published three books of hybrid poetry, memoir, and playwriting: Ca’Venezia (2021, Partial Press), We Knew No Mortality (2018, Acta Publications), and 30 Days Dry (2015, Thought Collection Publishing). Eric has published poetry in Transom, Analogies & Allegories, Tiny Spoon, Bombay Gin, The Gordian Review, Barely South Review, Verde Qué Te Quiero Verde, Kairos, and other journals; prose in Jacket2, Signs and Society, Entropy, Miracle Monocle, and Gender Forum; translations in Rattle, Asymptote, Exchanges, The Adirondack Review, and Columbia Journal; and playwriting in Plath Profiles. His plays have been produced in Chicago and New York; productions and readings include PLATH/HUGHES; The House of Bernarda Alba; Lead Me Into Dark; Phaedra, Released; and Barrens, which won the 2021 Orinda Award for Best Translation.

Eric holds a PhD in Humanities from the University of Louisville, an MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, and a BA in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Chicago. Eric’s writing focuses on magical poetics and queer theory, public history, and translation. Eric is the Digital Archive Editor at the Poetry Foundation, where he curates, commissions, and writes for poetryfoundation.org. Follow Eric at reshoemaker.com.