Alexander Jorgensen is a poet, visual artist, educator, and traveler whose work moves among text, image, place, and cross-cultural experience. His current profile at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani identifies him as an ESL instructor and records an MFA in Creative Writing from Regis University, a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and filmmaking study at Prague Film School.
Jorgensen’s writing and visual work have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Otoliths and The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998–2008. DIAGRAM has described him as a writer, visual artist, educator, and adventurer, a combination that closely matches the range visible across his Shampoo appearances.
Alexander Jorgensen in Shampoo
Shampoo preserves Jorgensen across Issues 31, 36, and 38. Issue 31 lists Three Poems. Issue 36 includes “Milwaukee Poem.” Issue 38 presents the concrete poem “Tall Ships,” dedicated to Zuzana Hronkova.
These appearances place Jorgensen within Shampoo’s archive of contemporary poets and show a practice that moves between conventional lyric presentation and explicitly visual composition.
Visual poetry and composition
“Tall Ships” makes the visual field part of the poem’s meaning. Its original Shampoo page depends on an image rather than continuous text, placing Jorgensen within a long tradition of visual and concrete poetry in which typography, placement, and image function as compositional material.
His inclusion in The Last Vispo Anthology and in multiple issues of Otoliths reinforces that connection. This work belongs naturally beside Shampoo’s broader record of experimental poetry, where the poem can extend beyond lineated text into visual structure and hybrid form.
Place, travel, and literary practice
Jorgensen’s biography is marked by movement across countries and teaching environments. His current university profile notes work in the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, India, Central and South America, China, the Middle East, and Iraqi Kurdistan. That geographic range gives additional context to poems and projects shaped by travel, cities, language, and visual observation.
The Milwaukee reference in Shampoo Issue 36 also links his work to an American literary geography, while later teaching and artistic activity broaden that field outward. This combination of local reference and international movement gives his work a distinctive place within American poetry shaped by mobility and exchange.
Further reading
American University of Iraq, Sulaimani provides Jorgensen’s current academic profile. DIAGRAM documents his visual-poetry publications and exhibition history.