recent interviews, news, and poetry

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I gave an interview yesterday with The Nebraska Girls Lit Hour. It was such fun! I’ve been listening to the interviews Wyatt Underwood and Melissa Alvarado post for some time and have enjoyed listening to them speak with Molly Peacock, Eloise Klein Healy, and many other fabulous poets and writers others. In my interview, I spoke about the letterpress books Farm Hands (2:10-7:50) and Unclose the Door (7:56-46:00), the full-length book Sprung, (58:58-60:52) and the anthology I edited Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (46:04-56:28). (I’m including the times, in case you want to zip to a particular book in the interview.) Thanks Melissa and Wyatt!

 

I was also included in a feature by Shelby Fleig “Spring Stanzas: Professors Pick Poetry Month Favorites” in the Daily Nebraskan with Ted Kooser, Grace Bauer, and Stacey Waite. We discussed our favorite poem. Here’s the picks: “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden. “Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry” by Stephen Dunn, and “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton.

 

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Finally, in poetry related news, a feature by Shelby Fleig “UNL lecturer Laura Wiseman curates collection of women’s ‘resistance’ poetry” that runs in the Daily Nebraskan today includes interviews with WWR poets Deborah McGinn, Lucy Adkins, and Marjorie Saiser. Here’s Deborah :

“It was not the appeal of gathering tragedies, but gathering truth, restoration, healing and moving on when possible,” McGinn said. “Nothing is hidden in shame.”

Marge:

“The message we get from our culture is that poems about violence toward women should not be published,” Saiser said. “Keep still and write about something nice. Violence against women: don’t talk about it.”

Lucy:

“This collection deals courageously with difficult and dangerous subjects in a way I have not encountered before,” Adkins said. “The different voices, coming one after another, after another have a cumulative power that I believe will endure for a long, long time.”

Wow. I am endlessly amazed by the fine poets in this anthology. They truly astonish me and I am grateful for their work.

Recent press and events for UNCLOSE THE DOOR and WWR

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My letterpress book UNCLOSE THE DOOR was selected to be included in the show Heart & Hands:

Unclose the Door in Heart & Hands 2013 Exhibition
April 8 - May 31, 2013
Love Library, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE

Unclose the Door in Heart & Hands 2013 Exhibition
October 11 - November 14, 2013
Criss Library, University of Nebraska-Omaha
Omaha, Nebraska

Hearts and Hands will include: Artists’ Books | Altered Books | Collaborations | Digitally Printed Books | Fine Press Editions | One-of-a-Kind Books |Sculptural Book Objects.

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Unclose the Door was recently in the news. Bradley’s “In the Spotlight” piece notes:

A new collection of poems about the life of an Illinois-born suffragist carries the handiwork of Bradley students…Wiseman’s poems are based around the life and career of Matilda Fletcher, a 19th-century suffragist and distant ancestor of the author. Fletcher, a writer and lecturer who lived in the Midwest, traveled the country advocating for the women’s rights movement and shared the stage with noted feminists such as Susan B. Anthony.

Unclose the Door, in ether

The Peoria Journal Star notes:

…the book and the written word are still honored as the core purpose of the printing press.

and from the press’s editor Robert Rowe:

“There’s something deeply satisfying about making a finely crafted object,” said Rowe.

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Unclose the Door and my broadside “The Pomegranate” was featured at the Gold Quoin Press table at the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City.

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Also, Les Femmes Folles reviewed the anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence. It’s definitely worth quoting in full:

Poetry, like visual art, illuminates with the potential of societal change. Judy Chicago’s 2006 sculpture, “Snake Arm”—a raised a fist coiled by a golden snake—calls to mind fertility and connection while also questioning aggression and war. Her series, “The Holocaust Project” (1985-93) brought the darkened tragedy of the Holocaust’s violent “medical experiments” and sexual violation of women to attention. Faith Ringgold’s “The Flag is Bleeding #2,” (1973), a piece on violence against women, offers the American flag, a symbol for militarism and racial violence, and a stoic black mother who attempts to protect her children, while she, the children, and the flag bleed. These artistsdeal with violence and political issues head-on, garnering revolutionary enlightenment and societal change. Each of the diverse, enthralling poems in Wiseman’s Women Write Resistance is a work of art, revealing hope and cultural transformation. Exhilarating and groundbreaking, Women Write Resistance combines true heart-wrenching stories of gender abuse with revelatory “sassing” language demanding meaningful conversation on the universal issue and, hopefully, change. ~Sally Deskins, founding editor of Les Femmes Folles, journal of women in art

Wow! Thank you for this wonderful press!

Oh, and if you haven’t heard, there’s WWR events taking place in the next few weeks in NYC, Philly, and in Nebraska. I hope to see you there!

Recent Readings

I gave three readings the first week of April to begin April’s poetry month celebration. I read with several readers in an Art Block Party at the LUX Center of the Arts.

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I also read with Twyla Hansen at Indigo Bridge Books on the theme of women and land. I was able to read a few poems from my forthcoming collection MEN AND THEIR WHIMS.

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I read with Marjorie Saiser at Tuesdays with Writers on the theme of women and creativity. The event included art by Wendy Bantam.

Part of that event included an interview on “Friday Live” at the Mill by William Stibor (starts 26:50, or 28:23) with both Marge and Wendy. It was completely fun to be on the radio and to be in that environment at the Mill in the morning.

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To celebrate Women’s History Month, I was asked to be the visiting writer at Bradley University. I read from my letterpress books UNCLOSE THE DOOR and FARM HANDS.

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The Collum-Davis Library there displayed my letterpress books.

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I also gave a poetry workshop and was the visiting writer at the New Hampshire Institute of Art.

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They filmed the reading I gave in entirety at Teti Library. It’s featured in In Place LIVE. Fabulous.

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To officially release Women Write Resistance, several WWR poets joined me in “Shakespeare’s Sister” for Women’s Week on UNL’s campus, including Becky Faber, Grace Bauer, Sarah A. Chavez, Deborah McGinn, Lucy Adkins, Twyla Hansen, and more. I also read from the critical introduction and preface to Women Write Resistance in No Limits.

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Finally, I read in March’s First Friday event in Femme Qui Bercent with Cat Dixon, Marilyn Coffey, Mary Spittler, Denise Eileen Brady, and more at Noyes Gallery.

And, because I forgot to mention this in February’s news, I also read in Poetry at the Moon with Fran Higgins.