Dr. Diana Woodcock

Specialization

Creative Writing, Environmental Literature, and Composition

Education

• Ph.D. Creative Writing, Lancaster University
• MFA Creative Writing, Virginia Commonwealth University
• BS Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University

Biography

Diana Woodcock teaches English courses as part of the Liberal Arts & Sciences program at VCUarts Qatar. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where her research was an inquiry into the role of poetry in the search for an environmental ethic. She is the author of six full-length poetry collections: Heaven Underfoot (winner of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (a 2020 Paraclete Poetry Prize finalist), Facing Aridity (a 2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist), Tread Softly, Under the Spell of a Persian Nightingale, and Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders (winner of the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux International Women’s Poetry Prize). Her seventh chapbook is Near the Arctic Circle.

A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, she has had poems published in Best New Poets 2008, The Sixty Four: Best Poets of 2018, Women’s Review of Books, Nimrod International Journal, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Kyoto Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Humanities Review, Spiritus, Comstock Review, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her grand prize-winning poem, “Music as Scripture,” was performed onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco by Natica Angilly’s Poetic Dance Theater Company at Artists Embassy International’s 21st Dancing Poetry Festival. In 2010, her poetry was exhibited with Li Chevalier’s paintings at the Today Art Museum in Beijing, China.

She has received artist residency fellowships from Centrum, Hawthornden Castle (Scotland), Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), MICA/Rochefort-en-Terre, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Voices of the Wilderness (Alaska), The Arctic Circle Art and Science Expedition to the High Arctic, Outer Cape Artist-in-Residence Consortium, Norton Island (Eastern Frontier Foundation), the Everglades National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Research Interests

• Two Ecosystems in Crisis: The Arabian Peninsula and the Everglades
• The Role of Poetry in the Search for an Environmental Ethic
• How Environmental Rights and Human Rights Converge
• Women Past and Present Tapping into the Power of Poetry

Publications

• Heaven Underfoot (full-length poetry collection), Codhill Press, 2023
• Holy Sparks (full-length poetry collection), Paraclete Press, 2023
• Facing Aridity (full-length poetry collection), Wayfarer Books/Homebound Publications, 2021
• Tread Softly (full-length poetry collection), FutureCycle Press, 2018
• Near the Arctic Circle (chapbook), Tiger’s Eye Press (Infinities series), 2018
• Beggar in the Everglades (chapbook), Finishing Line Press, 2016
• Under the Spell of a Persian Nightingale (full-length poetry collection), Word Poetry/WordTech Communications, 2015
• Desert Ecology: Lessons and Visions (chapbook), Finishing Line Press, 2014
• Tamed by the Desert (chapbook), Finishing Line Press, 2013
• Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders (full-length poetry collection), Little Red Tree Publishing, 2011
• In the Shade of the Sidra Tree (chapbook), Finishing Line Press, 2010
• Mandala (chapbook), Foothills Publishing, 2009
• Travels of a Gwai Lo (chapbook), Toadlily Press, 2009

Honors

Faculty Research Awards:
VCUarts, Humanities and Social Sciences Fund Award (ONE VCU Research Initiative), 2022
Presidential Research Quest Fund Award, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2013
Distinguished Achievements in Research Award, VCUarts Qatar, 2011

Funded Research Projects and Grants

Woodcock has been awarded eight VCUarts Qatar Faculty Research Grants and five Faculty Development Grants to do research and to present papers or conduct workshops at conferences in Africa, Greece, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Canada, and the U.S.