“I believe poetry can touch upon some truths about consciousness that science and philosophy may not.”

Annie Guthrie is a recipient of a 2016 Artist Research & Development Grant.

Artist Research and Development Grants are designed to support the advancement of artistic research, aid in the development of artistic work and recognize the contributions individual artists make to Arizona’s communities. For more information about the Artist Research & Development Grant, click here.

Annie Guthrie’s book-length project will be a hybrid document of prose, interviews, photography, and poetry—a locally-grown, lyric memoir taking place in “real time.” Open True chronicles the discoveries of the author as she investigates notions of “sustainability” and “context awareness” as viable metaphors for personal and spiritual growth. The book is pollinated by different forms, including field notes, that reveal the pathways and pitfalls in a quest to “produce true,” (using terminology from open pollination). An apprentice looking for a mentor, Guthrie’s narrative is told in present tense, built from a constellation of stories culled from her encounters with her chosen teachers, including a local farmer, a forager, the proprietor of a seed company, and a beekeeper.

Annie_Guthrie_aAnnie Guthrie is a writer and jeweler from Tucson. She teaches Creative Writing courses at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and offers apprenticeships through her website www.annieguthrie.net.  Annie published a book on the craft of jewelry making, Instant Gratification, with Chronicle Books in 2001, and her first book of poems, The Good Dark , was published with Tupelo Press in 2015. She received her M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College in 1998, and a Bachelor of Arts in Poetry in 1992 from The University of Arizona.

Guthrie has work published in several journals including 1913, A Journal of Forms; Cutbank; Drunken Boat; Fairy Tale Review; Many Mountains Moving; Omnidawn:Omniverse; H_NGM_N; Ploughshares; Tarpaulin Sky; Spiral Orb; Real Poetik; The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide; and The Volta . She has received several awards for her writing including an Academy of American Poets Prize, an Arizona Commission on the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and TPAC Individual Artist Grant.