Joshua Clover

Joshua Clover
Joshua Clover being arrested during the Fall 2009 student and faculty protests at the University of California, Davis.
Born	Joshua Miller Kaplan (1962-12-30) December 30, 1962 Berkeley, California
Language	English
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Boston University; Iowa Writer's Workshop
Genre	Essays; Poetry
Notable works	Madonna anno domini

Joshua Clover (born December 30, 1962 in Berkeley, California) is a poet, critic, journalist and author. He has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry and is a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and recipient of an individual grant from the NEA; his first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Life

A graduate of Boston University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop MFA program, Clover is a Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, and was the distinguished Holloway poet-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002-2003.

He writes a column of film criticism for Film Quarterly, under the title "Marx and Coca-Cola," is a former senior writer and editor at the Village Voice, writes for The New York Times, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is a former senior writer for Spin. His film criticism includes a book on The Matrix for the British Film Institute, and the Criterion Collection essays for Band of Outsiders and Straw Dogs'.' Under the pseudonym "Jane Dark", Clover has written a number of film and music reviews for The Village Voice.

Clover is also a political activist. At UC Davis, along with eleven students, he engaged in a sit-in to protest the campus's financial arrangements with U.S. Bank. Clover and the eleven students, known as the "Davis Dozen," were each charged with 20 counts of obstructing movement in a public place and one count of conspiracy. All have been subsequently acquitted.

Clover's given name at birth was Joshua Miller Kaplan but via legal change he took his mother's maiden name. His mother, Carol J. Clover, is the originator of the final girl theory in a book on horror films and a professor emerita at the University of California at Berkeley.

Works

• Madonna Anno Domini (Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 68 pp.
• The Matrix (British Film Institute, 2005), 128 pp.
• The Totality for Kids (University of California Press, 2006), 76 pp.
• 1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About (University of California Press, 2009), 198 pp.

Articles

• Clover on The New Yorker, in the Village Voice, 2001 [1]
• Clover on Michel Houellebecq, in the Village Voice, 2003 [2]
• Clover on Semiotext(e), in Village Voice, 2002 [3]
• Clover on Courtney Love in the Village Voice, 2004 [4]
• Clover on Slavoj Žižek, in the Village Voice, 2005 [5]
• Clover on Guy Debord and John Ashbery in the Village Voice, 2005 [6]
• Clover on Gus Van Sant in the Village Voice, 2005 [7]
• Clover on Charles Reznikoff, in The New York Times Book Review, 2006 [8]
• Clover on Charles Baudelaire in The New York Times, December 2006 [9]
• Clover on "France:Still Revolting" [10]
• Clover on Velvet Goldmine, Spin magazine [11]
• Clover on Poetry Magazine [12]

Essays

• "Good Pop, Bad Pop: Massiveness, Materiality, and the Top 40", anthologized in This is Pop", Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01321-2 [13]
• "The Rose of the Name", Fence magazine, 1998 [14]

Reviews of Clover's Poetry

• The Totality for Kids, Village Voice, 2006. [15]
• Zoned", The Boston Review, September/October, 2006. [16]
• The Totality for Kids,CutBank, January 21, 2007. [17]

Trivia

• Clover wrote a regular reviews column for Spin magazine between 1999-2001 called "Show Us Your Hits."
• Clover's article on Poetry Magazine was noted by Greil Marcus in his Salon column "Real Life Rock Top Ten"[18]

External links

• UC Davis homepage
• American Academy of Poets profile
• Video of Clover reading at Bowery Poetry Club in New York, 2006
• Joshua Clover at Davis Wiki