Born on September 20, 1928, in New Haven, Connecticut, Donald Hall developed an interest in writing from an early age publishing his first work in 1944 at the age of 16.
Hall earned a B.A. from Harvard University in 1951 and then moved to Oxford to study for a B.Litt. Here he worked as editor of the Oxford Poetry Society's journal and as poetry editor of "The Paris Review". At the end of his first year he won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for his poem "Exile".
In 1957 Hall was appointed to the faculty in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. It was here that he met Jane Kenyon, then a student, but later to become a successful poet in her own right. She became his second wife in 1972. In 1975 they moved to Eagle Pond Farm in rural New Hampshire where Hall had spent many happy summers as a child with his maternal grandparents. They lived there together and worked on their writing until, in January 1994, Jane discovered she had a virulent form of leukemia. She died in 1995 after 15 months of illness.
Donald Hall has won two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Robert Frost Medal. He has served as poet laureate of New Hampshire as well as receiving many other awards and honours.
Donald Hall talks openly and movingly about his life as a writer and Jane Kenyon's struggle with leukemia and he also introduces and reads a number of his poems.
If you are already a Peoples Archive subscriber, we suggest the following stories as good places to start within the collection.
- My grandfather and life on the farm in New Hampshire
- Deciding to become a poet
- Second term at Exeter- bad things (Part 1)
- Meeting T.S. Eliot
- The onset of Jane Kenyons leukemia
- Poetry readings: "My Son My Executioner"