Leicester, England--December 30

To my great excitement and anticipation, I will be reading on December 30 in Leicester, England (or should I say UK? Not sure what's correct) with the excellent poet Matt Merritt. The reading will be held at the Quaker Meeting House on Queen's Road. More info later on exact address and time (which should be around 7 pm). If you are in England, or will be in England, or know anyone in England, pass the word!

Grand Marais, MN--July 11

I will be doing a poetry "salon" at Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais, Mn on July 11, beginning at 5 pm. I'm really looking forward to it! If you've never been to Grand Marais, you must go sometime. It's just beautiful---wwaaaayyyy up the North Shore of Lake Superior. We'll be taking our leisurely time driving up Highway 61 (yes, Bob Dylan's Highway 61) on Friday, stopping at Betty's Pies in Two Harbors, hiking over to Temperance Falls, and generally enjoying the scenery. The first time I went to Grand Marais, I immediately came home and started researching teaching jobs there. I calmed down eventually, but I do still love to visit when I can. I'm looking forward to hiking to Devil's Kettle (pictured at right), taking a freezing plunge into that ocean of a lake, and picking up a few more beach stones for my collection.

Happy Summer!

Midwest Book Awards, Part 2

Milk and Tides by Margaret Hasse was the winner in the Poetry category. I haven't read it yet, but have read Margaret's poems elsewhere, and she is such an accomplished poet. I had the chance to meet her Wednesday night (though we felt we might have met before but couldn't remember where), and she is as gracious and lovely as her poems are. I also met the other finalist Larry Shug, who lives in the real Lake Woebegone--Avon, MN. I am looking forward to reading his book, too. It was great to meet two other MN poets I hadn't known. I hope to get to know them and their work better. Photos of the three of us, plus other pics from the awards ceremony will be posted soon.

Edge of Forever by Peter Scott Eide won in the two-color cover category. It was a finalist in four categories and won all four. I didn't get a chance to see it, but it must be an extraordinary book! Congratulations to Peter. Unfortunately, I did not get to meet him. I'm definitely adding it to my list of gifts to give nature-and-Lake-Superior-lovers (like myself). I will be reading at Drury Lane books in Grand Marais on July 11, and can't wait to get back to one of my favorite spots on the planet.

An unexpected bonus at the awards ceremony was running into Elizabeth (Coco) Weber, who was my roommate on a magical two-week writing trip to Italy in 2005. I hadn't seen her since that time, and it was great to run into her. Her book was a finalist in the Art Book category, so I don't think it's a book of poetry, but I did read her earlier book of poems, The Burning House, and loved it. I'll be finding out more about this new one of hers.

This was a great event, and I'm totally honored to have been a finalist and to have gotten great comments from the judges. Photos coming soon...

Midwest Book Awards

I just got word that Breaking the Glass is a finalist for the Midwest Book Awards in two categories: Poetry and 2-Color Cover Design. Yippee! I couldn't be happier.

The other two finalists in the Poetry category are Margaret Hasse, for Milk and Tides, and Larry Shug for Arrogant Bones.

In the cover category, the others are Field Notes by Richard Quinney and Edge of Forever: Images of Lake Superior by Peter Scott Eide.

The award is given by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association.

From the MIPA website:

Finalists were chosen from 149 titles from 66 publishers in the 12 eligible states that were entered in the MIPA 19th Annual Midwest Book Awards competition for excellence in independent or non-profit publishing. More than 667 books were distributed to the judges for review in 25 categories.

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on May 13, 2009, with the help of our special guests from Publishers Weekly, Matthew Hurley and Associate Publisher Cevin Bryerman, who is a board member of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). Reservations are required to attend the Midwest Book Awards Ceremony at the Minnesota Humanities Center, 987 East Ivy Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, on Wednesday, May 13, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Flurries

As a blizzard bears down on us from the Dakotas (6-12 inches of snow expected, with much blowing and drifting), a new poem of mine on that very topic has been included in Flurry: wintry poetry, intermittently, from Minnesota and the Dakotas , an online journal edited by Todd Boss. March 7 is the posting date. Be sure to browse the excellent poetry by lots of Upper Midwest poets, some of whom are friends and acquaintances.

While we're on the topic, here's another wintry poem of mine. I've linked it to the Northography website, but it also was part of a collection that I entered in the 2007 Creekwalker Poetry Prize competition.

Photo by Steve Peterson, from an in-progress collection of photos taken along Highway 64, between Motley and Akeley, MN.

Visible and Invisible

Tiffany Besonen's collage incorporating a fragment of my poem " I am Smoke When I Can Be" is currently touring with the show "The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces" (Tiffany's collage is on the right in this photo--2 panels). I visited the show in Milwaukee, and I recommend it highly. The exhibit will be traveling around the US until 2011. It is though-provoking and moving. The show's curator, Jennifer Heath, has this to say about the exhibit:

Visible and Invisible Spaces intends to engage received wisdom about the veil - particularly current clichés and stereotypes about Islamic practices - and to reflect on the great ubiquity, importance and profundity of the veil throughout human history and imagination. Visible and Invisible Spaces asks artists to investigate the veil in its broadest contexts. The exhibition will be divided into three categories to be interpreted widely: The Sacred Veil, The Sensuous Veil , and The Sociopolitical Veil. Visible and Invisible Spaces, however, is not a documentary exhibition.

Visible and Invisible Spaces is a visual companion to Jennifer Heath's edited volume, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics (University of California Press, forthcoming 2008). The exhibition invited visual artists - including videographers, filmmakers and new media artists, as well as painters, sculptors, performance and installation artists - from around the world to investigate and re-vision the veil.

The veil is infinitely visual, yet it is also a means of concealment. The veil is itself mystery, even as it is the shroud that guards the mystery. Veiling is found everywhere and begins in Nature - such as eclipses and the periodic shedding of animals' outer bodily layer (feathers, skin, fur or horn) before re-growth. As much as the veil is fabric or a garment, the veil is also a concept. Veils can be illusion, divination, vanity, artifice, architecture, clothing, hair, deception, curtains, magic, alchemy and transformation, dream, euphemism and metaphor, depression, hallucination, masquerade, beauty, eloquent silence, holiness, birth, liberation, imprisonment. Veils are the ethers beyond consciousness, the hidden hundredth name of god, the final passage into death, even the biblical apocalypse - the lifting of god's veil to signal the "end times."

To be veiled is, to some degree, to be unseen, the condition of both great attraction and repulsion. The artists featured in Visible and Invisible Spaces will speak to these myriad aspects of the veil and more.

My First Amazon.com Review

I love it:

"Deep thoughtfulness rides on the surface of these pages. I've read these poems over and over, and each time it feels like the first. Every page is interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Wonderful work.
I look forward to enjoying many future additions to LouAnn Shepard Muhm's artistry."