Kimberly Johnson (born 1971) is an American poet and scholar of early modern literature.
Life Johnson was raised in Utah. She earned her MA in 1995 from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, her MFA in 1997 Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a PhD in 2003 from University of California, Berkeley.
She teaches courses in creative writing and Renaissance literature at Brigham Young University (BYU). Johnson's academic interests include lyric poetry, John Milton, and John Donne.
Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate,"Marking the Lambs" Slate, Nov. 2006"Catapult", Slate, March 15, 2011 The Iowa Review, 32 Poems, The Yale Review, and The Best American Poetry 2020, and her translations from Latin and Greek have been published in literary and academic journals. She has also published a scholarly examination of 17th-century poetry as well as a number of scholarly articles on seventeenth-century literature.
She has edited several collections of essays on Renaissance literature, and an online archive of John Donne's complete sermons.John Donne's Complete Sermons
She was married to poet Jay Hopler until his death in June 2022.
Awards In 2005, she was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the completion of her second collection, A Metaphorical God. In 2011, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She received the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship for 2024–2025.
Books
Poetry Leviathan with a Hook, Persea Books, 2002, A Metaphorical God, Persea Books, 2008, Uncommon Prayer, Persea Books, 2014, Fatal, Persea Books, 2022,
Criticism Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014,
Translations Virgil, Georgics, Penguin Classics, 2009, Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, Northwestern University Press, 2017.
As editor Lyric Temporalities, University of Toronto Press, 2026, Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, Yale University Press, 2013, Divisions on a Ground: Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Donald M. Friedman, George Herbert Journal Special Series and Monographs, 2008,
References
External links Author's website "A Metaphorical God with Poet Kimberly Johnson" , Thinking Aloud, Marcus Smith, 9/29/2008 "Poetry: Kimberly Johnson" , Hammer Readings, 5/14/09 "Kimberly Johnson", Verse Daily "A Metaphorical God" , Persea Books "Leviathan with a Hook" , Persea Books "The Georgics", Penguin Classics Catalogue Readings http://jacket2.org/commentary/remaking-it-new