Jeffrey Hanson

Jeffrey Hanson is an English teacher and poet whose life and career appear to have taken an unusually long route toward his first published book. He earned his PhD from Ohio University in 2007 and subsequently taught at both Hocking College and Ohio University. Ohio University's current faculty directory lists a Jeffrey Hanson as an English instructor.

What makes his biography particularly interesting is the movement between physical labor and academic life. Before spending roughly 25 years teaching, Hanson worked in manual labor and construction. That experience gives his eventual career as a literature professor—and now poet—a somewhat unusual trajectory: he didn't enter poetry solely through an academic or literary path. He came to it after experiencing work that is physical, practical, repetitive, and materially consequential.

His first book, Doubtful Stamina, is an 80-page collection of poetry, published in 2025 under his own imprint/name. Its ISBN is 979-8-218-63166-6. The book's description is revealing: “endurance—through love, labor, and nature.”

That combination seems especially significant given Hanson's biography. The book apparently treats endurance not as an abstract virtue but as something experienced through work, relationships, the natural world, and the existential problem of simply continuing. The title itself captures that tension: stamina suggests persistence, while doubt questions whether persistence is possible or worthwhile.

So there is an intriguing correspondence between the life and the title. A person who spent years doing construction and other manual work, then became a college professor, and eventually published his first poetry collection after retirement has, in a literal sense, lived through several kinds of endurance.