Paul
Marion was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1954. He grew up
in Franco-American parishes in Lowell (St. Louis de France) and nearby
Dracut (Ste. Thérèse). A graduate of the University
of Massachusetts at Lowell, he also studied in the MFA Program in
Writing at the University of California at Irvine.
He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Hit
Singles and Strong Place. He edited Atop an Underwood:
Early Stories and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac (Viking Press
1999).
His poems and essays have appeared in Yankee, Wisconsin Review,
Bostonia, Public Art Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Science
Monitor, The Salmon Literary Quarterly (Ireland), Bohemian (Japan),
and several anthologies, including For A Living: The Poetry of
Work (University of Illinois Press), The First Yes: Poems About Communicating
(Dryad Press/ASHA), Ad Hoc Monadnock (Monadnock Writers’ Group),
Québec Kérouac Blues (Écrits des Forges)
and Voices in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American
Writings (Soleil Press). With Kathleen Aponick and Jane Brox,
he co-edited Merrimack: A Poetry Anthology (Loom Press), a
collection of poems by writers from the Merrimack Valley of New England.
He is also the editor and co-author of French Class: French Canadian-American
Writings on Identity, Culture, and Place (Lowell: Loom Press,
1999), with Susan April, Paul Brouillette, and Marie Louise St. Onge.
In the 1980’s, he worked as an administrator for the U.S. Department
of the Interior, helping to build a National Historical Park in his
hometown. Among other projects, he managed the development of the
Jack Kerouac Commemorative, which was dedicated in 1988. The
New England Foundation for the Arts awarded him a four-year Culture
in Community Fellowship in 1996.
He is currently the Community Relations Director
at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a co-editor of and a
contributor to The
Bridge Review, on-line journal about the culture of the Greater
Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire.
Paul was recently interviewed by David Perry of the Lowell Sun. The
article is titled Poetry
emotion - 10 Questions with Paul Marion, Lowell's unofficial poet
laureate.
He and his wife, Rosemary Noon, and their son, Joseph, live in a
nineteenth-century mill agent’s house in Lowell.
