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Aaron Belz (born September 27, 1971 in Iowa City, Iowa) is an American writer, editor, and poet.

Biography

Belz was raised in Kirkwood, Missouri and spent time at numerous schools, including Westminster Christian Academy, the Stony Brook School, and Framlingham College (UK). In 1990 he was awarded a Maclellan Foundation Scholarship to attend Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he graduated with a double major in English and History (1993).

The following two years would prove most important to Belz’s development as a poet. While enrolled in the Creative Writing Program at New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, he studied poetics under Philip Levine, Allen Ginsberg, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, Gregory Corso, Sharon Olds, and others. He graduated with an M.A. in 1995. His recollections of this time, particularly of working with Ginsberg and corresponding with Levine, have been published in numerous places     and anthologized in Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine, from University of Iowa Press 

In 2003, Belz founded Observable Readings, a poetry series and chapbook imprint in St. Louis, which has twice won the Riverfront Times’ “Best of St. Louis” award (2008, 2012). In 2007 he received a Ph.D. in English at Saint Louis University and now teaches English at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, North Carolina.

Poetry

Belz’s poetry has been appeared in such journals as Fence, Exquisite Corpse,