Matthew Brennan

Matthew Brennan taught at Indiana State University before retiring in 2017. After graduating from Saint Louis University High, he earned a BA from Grinnell College and then an MA and PhD from the University of Minnesota. His poems, both in meter and free verse, often betray a romantic sensibility.

Brennan is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Snow in New York: New and Selected Poems (forthcoming 2021), One Life (2016), and The House with the Mansard Roof (2009), which was a finalist for the Best Books of Indiana. Brennan has contributed poems and criticism to Poetry Ireland Review, Commonweal, Sewanee Review, New York Times Book Review, Georgia Review, and other journals. He was awarded the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and his poetry has been featured in former US poet laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated newspaper column “American Life in Poetry” and on The Writer's Almanac.

Brennan is also the author of four books of literary criticism: The Colosseum Critical Introduction to Dana Gioia (2020), The Poet’s Holy Craft (2010), The Gothic Psyche (1997), and Wordsworth, Turner, and Romantic Landscape (1987). 

Brennan lives in Columbus, Ohio.