Description
The scope of the poets in this collection is as broad as the landscape itself, including work by Heid E. Erdrich, Mark Vinz, Debra Marquart, Ed Bok Lee, Tim Murphy, and North Dakota’s Poet Laureate, Larry Woiwode.
Some are poets descended from indigenous inhabitants of the High Plains. Others are descendants of thos who immigrated here from Germany, Russia, or the Scandinavian countries in the nineteenth century, or more recently from other parts of the country and world. They write about the historical struggles of settlement and assimilation, and more contemporary versions of those struggles in the Bakken oil patch in the western part of the state. Some write about North Dakota from the rural settings they have known and loved for a lifetime, others from the distant vantages of nostalgia or escape, and still others from the point of view of transplants coming to terms with their new home. The poets here include seasoned and emerging voices, women and men, old and young, those from the ranching and oil-flared badlands west of the Missouri, and from the flood-prone river valley farmlands of the east.
The poems in this book ache for home. They ache to be at home. In reflecting those who ache in this great expanse, these poems are about what connects us together as humans, poems that sing to each other across lines and pages and space, demonstrating that, as poet Thomas McGrath asserts in his Letter to an Imaginary Friend, North Dakota is everywhere.
Review
From the Inside Flap
About the Author
Poets Biographies Madelyne Camrud has lived in Grand Forks for all but two years of her married life and in North Dakota all but nine months. She is the author most recently of Oddly Beautiful.
Heidi Czerwiec moved to Grand Forks in 2005 to teach at UND, where she also directed the UND Writers Conference for seven years. She is a poet, translator, and essayist, the author most recently of Sweet/Crude: A Bakken Boom Cycle.
Heid E. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton and is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She is the author of four collections of poetry including National Monuments, which won a Minnesota Book Award, and Cell Traffic.
Dale Jacobson has published nine volumes of poetry, including Metamorphoses of the Sleeping Beast and the book-length poem, A Walk by the River.
Rhoda Janzen was born in Harvey, and wrote about her heritage in the New York Times #1 bestselling memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and a collection of poems, Babel’s Stair.
Robert King has published two books of poetry, Old Man Laughing and Some of These Days, and a creative non-fiction book about North Dakota s Sheyenne River, Stepping Twice into the River: Following Dakota Waters.
Denise Lajimodiere is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa who spent her early years raised on the reservation. She is the author of Dragonfly Dance.
Ed Bok Lee grew up in South Korea and North Dakota. He is the author of two national bestselling books of poetry and prose: Whorled, which won the American Book Award and Minnesota Book Award, and Real Karaoke People, winner of the Many Voices Project Prize and the PEN/Open Book Award.
Lisa Linrud-Marcis grew up on her family’s farm north of Velva. She received UND s 2011 Distinguished Thesis Award for In Grain, which was published as a chapbook by Finishing Line Press.
Debra Marquart‘s books include Everything’s a Verb and Small Buried Things. Marquart s memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was awarded the Elle Lettres Award from Elle Magazine and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award.
Tim Murphy was born in Hibbing. He graduated from Yale as Scholar of the House in Poetry in 1972. Now a resident of Fargo, he has more than 800 poems in print, and is completing his fourteenth book.
Jamie Parsley was born in Fargo and was raised near Harwood. He is the author most recently of Fargo, 1957, which chronicles the June 1957 tornado that struck Fargo.
Aaron Poochigian grew up in Grand Forks, ND and now lives in New York City. His published works include a book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr.
David R. Solheim was born in Elgin. He was selected as the North Dakota Statehood Centennial Poet and is the author most recently of The Landscape Listens: Poems.
Mark Vinz was born in Rugby. He is the author of Long Distance, The Work Is All, and In Harm’s Way.
Richard Watson, singer/songwriter and poet, is the author most recently of The Spot and Blue Jesus.
Larry Woiwode, North Dakota’s Poet Laureate, is the author of multiple works of poetry and prose, including the forthcoming chapbook, Land of Sunlit Ice (NDSU Press, May 2016).
Details
- Publisher : North Dakota State University Press; First Edition (March 20, 2015)
- Language : English
- Perfect Paperback : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0911042814
- ISBN-13 : 978-0911042818
- Item Weight : 11.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.