Martha Rhodes is the author of five collections of poetry: At the Gate (1995), Perfect Disappearance (2000, Green Rose Prize), Mother Quiet (2004), The Beds (2012), and The Thin Wall (2017). Her poems have been published widely in such journals as AGNI, Columbia, Fence, New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She has also been anthologized widely, her work appearing in AGNI 30 Years, Appetite: Food as Metaphor, Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology, Last Call: Poems on Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance, The KGB Bar Book of Poetry, among others.
Rhodes has taught at Emerson College, The New School, and University of California, Irvine. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She has been a visiting or guest poet at many colleges and universities around the country and has taught at conferences such as the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Frost Place, Indiana University, Sarah Lawrence Summer Conference, and Third Coast. She serves on many publishing panels throughout each year at colleges, conferences, and arts organizations, and is a regular guest editor at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Colrain Manuscript Conference. She also teaches private weekly workshops. In 2010, she took over as director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry in Franconia, New Hampshire. Rhodes is the founding editor and director of Four Way Books, publishers of poetry and short fiction. She lives in New York City.