Michael Prior is a writer and teacher. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Sewanee Review, The Asian American Writers' Workshop's The Margins, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series, among others. His first full-length book of poems, Model Disciple, was published by Véhicule Press in 2016. His second book, Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House), was published in Spring 2020.

Other poems by Michael Prior in Verse Daily:
September 17, 2016:   "Cuttlefish" "I meant to acknowledge what you hadn't yet confessed...."

Books by Michael Prior:

Other poems on the web by Michael Prior:
Three poems
"Wakeful Things"
Two poems
Two poems

Michael Prior's Website.

Michael Prior on Twitter.

About Burning Province:

"A magnificent collection. In a voice tenderly apocalyptic, Burning Province transmutes inherited stories and silences around the internment of Japanese-Canadians at the outbreak of World War II into a sublime testimony of resilience. These poems enact with technical conviction Simone Weil's dictum, 'no grandeur except in gentleness.' Michael Prior's fierce gentleness is an exciting and exacting talent."
—Ishion Hutchinson

"Prior's skill as a poet lies in his ability to both shape into being and rupture existing ideologies of the land and what it shelters—his poems upend preconceived notions of the pastoral. Fresh, crisp, and alive, this book is essential reading—if not for the breathless beauty of its lines, then for its historical revelations. Prior ensures that the stories of those loved ones never vanish."
—Sally Wen Mao

"Memory is a burning province in this noctilucent book that sings the night folds of history—its forgotten fragments and repressed accounts. Haunted by the exigencies of humans and planet, Prior's elegiac lyric narratives are as beautiful as they are necessary. His poems will entice you to see and feel the world freshly, the greatest gift literature can bestow."
—Alice Fulton