Kudos Corner

Burning Trash, a poetry collection by Mark James Andrews, has just been released from Pudding House.  Andrews’ poem, Looking At You, can currently be read in the online lit mag, Shaking Like A Mountain.  His poem, The Brook Trout Diaries, is forthcoming in the Spring Issue of Hiram Poetry Review.

Detroit Poet/SA-MDW Director M.L. Liebler Wins National Award
M.L. Liebler is the recipient of the prestigious 2010 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. The award is bestowed by Poets and Writers magazine to honor authors who “have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community.” Liebler has been an English professor at Wayne State University since 1980. When he is not teaching or planning and hosting events for Springfed Arts-Metro Detroit Writers he travels around the world performing music and poetry for the State Department. His poetry collection “Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream” (Wayne State University Press, 2008) earned him the Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence and the 2009 American Indie Book Award. About his accomplishments, Liebler told Susan Whitall of the Detroit News, “It comes out of the working class experience, which is where I come from... I did this writing thing, but I never thought of myself as any kind of huge talent or major intellectual. My thinking was hey, if I’m able to get into poetry and I don’t come from this background of having anything to do with the arts, maybe other people like me could do it if they were given half a chance.”

Joy Gaines-Friedler will be included a past-participants talk on Getting your Work Published at The Bear River Writers’ Conference, June 3-7, 2010.  

Linda Nemec Foster’s most recent poetry book, Talking Diamonds, has been nominated for the Society of Midland Authors Award, Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award, and the American Book Award.

Congratulations to Maria Costantini!  Italica Press (N.Y.) has accepted her Italian-English translations of the early 20th century Italian poet Ada Negri.  The manuscript is titled The Book of Mara.  On December 17, shortly after she received the news, Costantini gave a commanding reading of poems from her memoir for A Gathering of Writers at The Plymouth Coffee Bean.  Costantini's good friend and fellow SA-MDW member, Olga Klekner says that Italica has "... the privilege of introducing (Costantini's) amazing work to the English speaking world..."  She has " brought Ada Negri back to life!"

On November 16, 2009 Garrison Keillor featured another Christine Rhein poem on The Writer’s Almanac, his public radio program and website: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
And there’s more: SA-MDW member Christine Rhein has been awarded a three-week residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida beginning on February 15. There will be approximately ten writers, ten artists, and ten composers in residence at the ACA during that time. Christine’s book, Wild Flight, is now available in paperback. She has new poems in Atlanta Review, Margie, Driftwood 10, and at www.ScytheLiteraryJournal.com.

Springfed Arts-MDW member Linda Nemec Foster has a new poetry book that was published by New Issues Press (Western Michigan University).  Talking Diamonds is Foster’s ninth collection and it was recently nominated for both the Michigan Notable Book Award and the Ohio Book Award in Poetry.  The book has already garnered praise from such poets as Stu Dybek, Lisel Mueller, and Sydney Lea.  Lea writes that “Foster exacts an energy that is... visionary, even miraculous...Talking Diamonds challenges, intrigues, awes, and ultimately gratifies, poem after excellent poem.”  The book can be ordered from any bookstore or online at amazon.com, spd.com, or the publisher’s website at www.wmich.edu/newissues

Foster was invited to give a reading and seminar at a national colloquium on Women, Poetry, and the Journey of the Spirit at Loyola University in Chicago in November.  Her poetry is also being taught in an advanced literature class at Fordham University in NYC.  The course, which examines the literature of the immigrant experience, will discuss the works of Foster, Frank McCourt, Eavan Boland, John O’Hara, Francine Prose, Czeslaw Milosz, and Stuart Dybek.

Spirits Walking
Lori Goff’s Stories of Appalachia
Spirits Walking is Lori Goff’s second book of poetry and prose. 
“Lori Goff has created a sense of place that takes us to the hills of Kentucky to discover the cultural heritage of a peope.” — Margo LaGattuta (Available Amazon.com and bookstores)

“The Cranes Are Flying”
by Joan P. Hudson, poems of war and remembrance, love, family and others, season and place with the crane in flight as depicted in East Asian art “...solid in its poetry” - M. L. Liebler, appeared in the Independent Press Listing of the New York Review of Books, Sept. 24 and will appear again in the November 19, 2009 issue.

Margo LaGattuta, Michigan poet, essayist and writing teacher, has won 6
prizes in an annual competition run by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her First Place prize of $1500 in the Founder’s Award was for a poem titled “The Story Melting.” There were 450 entries and the judge was national poet Natasha Sajé. LaGattuta also won a 4th Honorable Mention in that category for a poem titled “Bird with a Tranquil Look and Its Wings in Flames,” written from a painting by Joan Miró. Her other four prizes in this year’s competition were 1st Prize in the Two Ladies from Texas Award for a poem titled “What If” and 1st Prize in the Indiana State Poetry Clubs Award for a poem titled “The House that Swallowed Us.” She also won two Honorable Mentions: 6th HM in the Columbine Poets of Colorado Award for “Naked with Trees” and 7th HM in the Louisiana State Poetry Award for “Trying to Write a Poem Again.” Her prizes were awarded at the national convention recently held in Duluth, Minnesota and sponsored by the League of Minnesota Poets.
Poet wins honors

MDW Director, St. Clair Shores poet and Wayne State University’s M.L. Liebler has received double literary honors for his 2008 book, “Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream.” The book — an 82-page collection of reflections on life, belonging and death — recently won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in New Jersey. The book also received the 2009 Indie Excellence Book Awards in Poetry, which honors small press & university press publication. 

Cave Canem congratulates Toi Derricotte on winning the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award in recognition of her many contributions to poets, poetry and American letters as Cave Canem’s co-founder. Visit the CAVE CANEM FOUNDATION, INC. www.cavecanempoets.org

John Jeffire’s poem “Closing Time” will appear in an upcoming issue of Labor. The poems “The Good Soldier” and “The East Enders” will appear in a 2010 issue of Many Mountains Moving.

Third Wednesday, literary arts journal, edited by Laurence W. Thomas, announces the winners of its first annual poetry contest.  Judged by Philip Dacey of New York City, the winners are: Overall winner, Veronica Sanitate, Ann Arbor, for her poem “Nest by Winter.”  Co-winners are, Edward Morin, Ann Arbor, for “Elegy” and Jim Bainbridge, Los Angeles, with his  poem “Terminal.” 

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is among the winners of the 2008 American Book Award for All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions Inc.), a collection of poetry. Maria is from New Jersey, has been on staff for Springfed Writing Retreats and is a member of SA-Metro Detroit Writers. We congratulate her for this great honor, announced in December. The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.

Terry Blackhawk, Fleda Brown and Heather Sellers are the three Michigan women among the 96 authors, who include Rita Dove, Mary Oliver, Toi Derricotte, Kim Addonizio, and Natasha Trethewey among many others included in When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women by Andrea Hollander Budy. Also included is Jan Beatty. Jan and Terry Blackhawk will be reading at the Scarab Club, March 29 for our Downtown Series Readings.

SA-MDW Member Rivkin’s Debut Collection THE VALISE
With a Chagall-like exhilaration, the poems in Sophia Rivkin’s debut collection, “The Valise,” refuse to stay put, lie down. I love the attitude of almost perpetual surprise with which her poems confront their subjects. Rivkin finds her truths in the surreal, the folkloric, the vibrant lie, the slightly off-kilter translation. Like the child born with a “head already covered/with ash,” she is an innocent, puzzling out a ravaged history. The valise is both burden and joy, filled with the humility of love, the delicacy of lace, the ash of destruction, the persistence of the past. These energetic poems let “the stunned, ruined things…speak.” They help us understand the price of survival, and we pay it gladly.
Terry Blackhawk, author of Escape Artist, winner of the John Ciardi Prize

On July 12, Christine Rhein’s poem Tuning was featured on the website Poetry Daily. Look for it in the archives at poems.com. Christine will be reading in the metro area in September then to Dallas, Texas in the fall to read from her new collection Wild Flight.

Zilka Joseph returned from Kolkata, India where she read from her collection Land I Live In: Poems. She was interviewed by “The Statesman”, one of the leading and oldest newspapers in the city. The book was released at a meaningful event at the Oxford Bookstore by her professor from Jadavpur University where Zilka did her masters in Comparative Lit.

Rebecca B. Rank has won the 2008 Permafrost Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest.  They will be publishing the chapbook entitled, Pears in a Porcelain Bowl out by early summer or late spring. Rebecca is an SA-MDW member who has been participating in Mary Jo Firth Gillett’s poetry classes. Rebecca’s work has appeared in Smartish Pace, The MacGuffin, River City, Phoebe, Diner, The Sow’s Ear Review, To Topos and many others. An excerpt from her memoir, Some Time in Crime, appeared in Feminist Studies. She is the winner of the 2001 Third Coast Poetry Prize. Currently, her poems are forthcoming in Flyway, Folio: A Literary Journal and Permafrost.
Verse Daily posted a poem by SA-MDW member Maria Costantini. The poem is titled “Like Us” and has also been published in The Macguffin. Maria is a retired bilingual/ESL educator. She writes poetry, creative non-fiction, and poetic translations. Born near Rome, Italy, much of her work reflects her cultural heritage and her immigrant experience. Her poems have been published in PSM anthologies and have won prizes in PSM and NFSPS contests. You can access her poem by going to the January 12 archives at www.versedaily.org
Zilka Joseph has been selected 2008-2009 Elsie Choy Lee Scholar by the Center for Education of Women, University of Michigan. It is a scholarship honoring the capabilities and commitment to women in the field of art, writing and music.
SA-MDW member Linda Nemec Foster took first prize in the Detroit Working Writers Spring Readings Competition in creative non-fiction for “Tableaux:  The New Europe” and second prize in poetry for “Paranoia for Two Voices.”  Foster also had two poems selected as finalists in the 2008 Rita Dove Poetry Award sponsored by Salem College’s National Literary Awards.  Her new chapbook, Ten Songs from Bulgaria, has just been published by Cervena Barva Press of Boston.  It can be ordered from www.cervenabarvapress.com

Linda Leedy Schneider won second place in The Pedestal Magazine’s Readers’ Award contest for her poem Albania Day Fourteen.  Linda is poet and writer, a personal poetry and writing mentor, a clinical social worker in private practice and an instructor at Kendall College of Art and Design. She is also a Workshop Director for The International Women’s Writing Guild. Her work has been published in many literary magazines, including Rattle, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Pudding Magazine, Driftwood Review, Poetry Midwest, and Miranda Literary Magazine. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Through the Lattice (Argonne House Press 2002) and Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist (Pudding House Publications 2007). Linda Leedy Schneider has attended the Walloon Writers’ Retreat and she lives in Grand Rapids. Check out
www.thepedestalmagazine.com and you can also read Billy Collins’ poem Altitude.

SA-MDW Member Featured in Detroit Free Press for Workshops at Royal Oak Library
As Writer-in-Residence for the Royal Oak Public Library, Cindy La Ferle is spearheading a variety of programs, lectures, and classes of special interest to writers of all genres. These will be listed on the Royal Oak Public Library Web site http://www.ropl.org/ . Cindy will also post periodic updates on her own Web site: http://www.laferle.com/) All of these programs are free to the public — but advance registration is required. The Writer-in-Residence series was launched in January with an Introduction to Magazine Writing workshop (led by Theresa Falzone of Signature Media), and will feature Michigan poet Margo LaGatutta and rock star author Judy Davids of the Mydols this spring. In May, Cindy La Ferle will host a talk on writing personal essays. Throughout the year, the ROPL will be featuring many authors and workshop leaders speaking on plot development for the novel; crafting the memoir and personal essay; self-promoting and marketing books; and much more. Visit Cindy’s Home Office: www.laferle.com - A new column/blog every week.

Joy Gaines-Friedler has been awarded a finalist in MARGIE the American Journal of Poetry 2007 poetry contest. Her poems will be featured in the next issue (fall 2008). Joy’s work has been widely published. She was the 2006 First Place winner of The Litchfield Review poetry contest for a series of poems she wrote based on the journal of her friend Jim who died from AIDS. Joy is currently a MFA student at Ashland University in Ashland Ohio and has been a participant in Mary Jo Firth Gillett’s Springfed Arts Workshops for the past five years. Her first book of poems, Like Vapor, will be published by Mayapple Press this summer.

New Chapbook by Cheri L. R. Taylor
Release Sat, March 8 at Scarab Club
Wolf Maiden Moon,has just been released from Pudding House. The official chapbook release party is March 8, 5 pm - 7 pm at The Scarab Club. Cheri L. R. Taylor holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and is currently working as a Writer in Residence with the Inside Out Literary Arts Project conducting poetry workshops in the Detroit Public Schools. She has four chapbooks of poetry and has been published in Rattle, Awakenings Review, The Café Review, Clean Sheets, Current Magazine, Ellipsis, and others. Springfed Arts-Metro Detroit Writers is proud of Cheri’s work and pleased to present this event.

The January 3rd Springfed Thursday Night at The Jazz Café of Music Hall enjoyed a large turnout. An enthusiastic audience enjoyed The Blue Effect, a teen blues band from Country Day School and Detroit poets Lisa Rutledge, Zilka Joseph, Norene Cashen and Blair.

On January 10, SA-MDW poet Cheri R. L. Taylor joined with Ber-Henda Williams to celebrate a coalition among poets and scribes throughout Metro Detroit. The program also featured Diamondancer, Blair, the Chicago poet Quraysh Ali Lansana, and music from DJ-producer Andre Royster. The well attended event took place at Diane DeCillis' The Print Gallery. Wine and food was served. Cheri R. L. Taylor read from her new book Wolf Maiden Moon (Pudding House Press).

A Gathering of Writers series was featured in the Detroit Free Press (freep.com) on November 25, 2007 in an article titled “Prose and Poetry in Plymouth” written by Free Press Special Writer Nancy Deutsch. Deutsch commended host Annie Horvath, co-hosts Rachel Schreiber and Lisa Rye, and the Plymouth Coffee Bean Co. manager, Donna DeMeyer, for nurturing the openly creative atmosphere, saying “Newcomers are made to feel welcome. There is a lot of laughing and camaraderie, and novice readers are soon put at ease… Not everyone who reads is a published poet, but that seems beside the point.” The Gathering is held every Thursday of the month at 7:30 p.m. except January and July. MDW are pleased to see the long-running series get deserved recognition.

Congratulations to Linda Nemec Foster who recently received the 2008 Creative Arts Award sponsored by the Polish American Historical Association.  This international award recognizes the contributions in the field of creative arts (music, visual arts, literature) by individuals or groups who have promoted an awareness of the Polish experience.  Linda was given the award on January 5 in Washington, DC at a gala reception at the Embassy of Poland.  She also gave a poetry reading at the event.  The reception was part of the annual conference of the American Historical Association.

NEW POETRY BOOK BY DAVID JAMES
Trembling in Someone’s Palm by Michigan author David James is a book of 36 prose poems. David has published three poetry collections and several one-act plays. He holds a B.A. from Western Michigan University in English and Creative Writing, an M.A. from Central Michigan University in Creative Writing, and Ed. D. from Wayne State University. He’s an English Instructor at Oakland Community College. Trembling in Someone’s Palm is available for $9.00 through March Street Press, 3413 Wilshire, Greensboro, NC 27408, website: www.marchstreetpress.com, or email: rbixby@earthlink.net

Congratulations to Joy Gaines-Friedler. A group of her poems, based on the journal of her friend Jim Kerr who died from AIDS, won first prize in The Litchfield Review summer contest. Her poems can be found in the Summer 2006 issue.
 
Congratulations to Linda Nemec Foster for recent wins/finalist awards in competitions by Detroit Working Writers, New Millennium Writings, Ekphrasis, and Cervena Barva Press, a Boston area press that will publish her new chapbook, Ten Songs from Bulgaria, in late 2008. Linda is also a finalist in the 2007 ArtServe Michigan Governor’s Award in the Michigan Artist category. The winner will be announced at a gala on Thursday, November 29 at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Congratulations to Chris Rhein whose poem, “One of Those Questions.” was selected by Natasha Trethewey out of approximately 2,000 poems to appear in Best New Poets 2007, 50 Poems from Emerging Writers. Chris’s poem was nominated by Larry Goldstein after appearing in Michigan Quarterly Review. Information on the publication can be found at http://www.bestnewpoets.org/

Big congratulations to Liz Volpe for winning the 2007 Robert Watson Poetry Prize for her chapbook titled Brewing in Eden. She will be awarded with the publication of a letterpress-printed, limited-edition chapbook, a cash prize, and an invitation from the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to read in their 2007-2008 Distinguished Visiting Writers Series.

2007 Bookwoman Award Winner Terry Blackhawk
The Detroit Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) will present the 2007 Michigan Bookwoman Award to Terry Blackhawk October 9 at a 6PM dinner program at Pasquale’s restaurant on Woodward in Royal Oak.
Dr. Blackhawk, award-winning poet and author of 3 volumes of poetry, is the founder of InsideOut Literary Arts Project www.insideoutdetroit.org, which places professional creative writers as teachers and mentors in Detroit Public Schools to encourage young people’s imaginative writing. The program promotes self-confidence by publishing and celebrating the students’ creative work. InsideOut empowers students by teaching basic literacy skills and self-expression through writing. InsideOut also provides students with opportunities to perform their work through poetry readings and competitions.
After receiving the Bookwoman Award, Dr. Blackhawk will be the featured speaker. The public is invited to attend the event, however reservations are required by Friday, September 28. Contact Laurel Brandt at laurelwnba@gmail.com or (248) 684-0845.

Poet Zilka Joseph honored with Zell Fellowship at U of M
When Linda Gregerson, a recent Guggenheim Fellow, called to invite Zilka Joseph to be in the MFA program at University of Michigan this fall, Joseph was delighted. “This is so meaningful to me. I don’t think we ever stop learning, and this is a dream come true.” She’s accepted the Zell Fellowship, which will allow her to study for her MFA degree in Ann Arbor with a slate of professional writers. This has been a winning year for Joseph, who teaches poetry for Springfed Arts and has been an ESL tutor at Oakland Community College for the past four years. In addition to receiving this honor from the MFA Program at U of M, she published a chapbook of poems, Lands I Live In, with Mayapple Press. She will commute and live part-time in Ann Arbor, where school starts on September 4. We at Springfed Arts wish her all the best in her new adventure.

Congratulations
to Bernie DeHut, Karen Marie Duquette, L. Marie Elsey, Lori Goff, Maryhelen Hagood, Susan Kehoe, Margo LaGattuta, Dinah Lee, Polly Opsahl, Bob Simion, Mary Simion, and Mary Ellen Soroka for the publication of their anthology, Freefalling, Writing without Limits. Help them celebrate at their BOOK PARTY on Saturday, September 15 from 1:00-4:00 PM at Orion Township Library, 825 Joslyn Road.

Chris Rhein Wins Walt McDoanld
Chris Rhein’s poetry manuscript has won the 2007 Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry, which is a highly regarded, invitation only competition. Poetry Editor Robert Fink noted two of Chris’s poems in the 2006 Southern Review and invited her to enter her manuscript. She was notified of her win in just 16 days! Her collection, Wild Flight, will be published in April 2008 by Texas Tech University Press. Congratulations, Chris!

Margo LaGattuta wins DWWA
Margo LaGattuta, MFA, who teaches creative writing in our Springfed Arts writing workshops program, was the winner of seven national awards for her poetry at the National Federation of State Poetry Societies convention in Oklahoma this summer. Two of her columns, which she writes weekly for Suburban Lifestyles, also won first and third place in the journalism division of the Detroit Working Writers Awards competition, judged by W. Kim Heron of MetroTimes.

Phillip Sterling Wins Frank Cat
Phillip Sterling, a Springfed Arts-Metro Detroit Writers member from Grand Rapids, won the 2007 Frank Cat Chapbook Competition for his collection Abeyance. It will be published later this summer.

The Heart of it All
Poetry and Prose by Lori Goff
Reviewed by Midwest Book Review: “In the pages of The Heart of it All, Lori Goff deftly articulates the joys and sorrows of ordinary life while drawing upon landscapes comprising the natural world. Poet and essayist, Lori Goff is clearly a master wordsmith…memorable verse and lyrical prose is to be treasured and read again and again.” The book is available through bookstores and by ordering direct from author. Send $19.00 (includes postage and handling) in check or money order made payable to Lori Goff, P.O. Box 906, Walled Lake, MI 48930.

Lands I Live In
Zilka Joseph’s poetry chapbook
Lands I Live In, published by Mayapple Press is Zilka Joseph’s first chapbook of poems, drawing on her early life in Calcutta and the challenges in adapting to a new life in the Midwest . William Olsen writes: “Zilka Joseph’s remarkable debut, Lands I Live In, is a book of arrivals, all difficult in their challenges to a poet’s identity…Joseph is able to create clarity out of that difficulty by being attentive to the existential and always peculiar pressures of a cultural experience so multitudinous and curious that its possibilities remain in constant flux.” Congratulations, Zilka! Mayapple Press, 42 pages, $12.95

Linda Nemec Foster’s Ridgeway Press Book Inspires Music
Linda Nemec Foster has collaborated with acclaimed jazz musician Steve Talaga on a CD titled Contemplating the Heavens, inspired by Linda’s poetry chapbook of the same title (Ridgeway Press, 2001). Talaga composed an original score for nine musicians that reflects musical styles of jazz, classical, blues, contemporary, and third stream. Both the score and CD were nominated for this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music. The world premiere of Contemplating the Heavens is Friday, April 20, 8 pm at Aquinas College’s Kretchmer Recital Hall. Tickets on sale at the door for $7.00 (adults) and $5.00 (students). For more info, contact Aquinas College’s Music Department at (616) 459-8281. For more info on the chapbook or CD visit these websites:
www.lindanemecfoster.com or cdbaby.com/cd/talaga2

InsideOut in the National & Local News!
MDW member Terry Blackhawk’s after school poetry program InsideOut Literary Arts Program recently received local and national exposure on WDET FM’s Front Row Center with Celeste Headlee. Click link below and pull the program bar to about 37:25 to hear it:
http://www.wdetfm.org/rss/archives/listen.wmx?show_id=41&date=1168146000 Ted Kooser, American Poet Laureate (2004-2006) selected an InsideOut Literary Arts Program student Tatiana Ziglar for his national American Life in Poetry Series. Click the link below to read the poem: http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/093.html

Joan Hudson’s first book of poems Days of Infamy
Days of Infamy: Poems of Love, Friendship and Family, Patriotism, Season and Place by Dorrance Publishing Co, Inc”...Solid in its poetry” says M. L. Liebler. $9.00 (62 pages) Order from Joan at Hudson5201@yahoo.com or from www.amazon.com

Naomi Madgett Long honored at Charles H. Wright Museum
A sculptured bust of longtime member Naomi Madgett Long is part of an exhibit of African American art in the new AT&T Gallery at the Charles H. Wright Museum from Jan 14 to April 15. She will also be reading at Black Star Community Bookstore on Livernois on Saturday, Feb. 3, from 3:00 to 5:00.

NEW BOOK BYLINDA NEMEC FOSTER
Linda Nemec Foster, Michigan poet and member of  the Springfed Arts, has just published a new book with Eerdmans Publishing Co. in collaboration with artist Dianne Carroll Burdick.  Listen to the Landscape is a stunning synthesis of Linda’s haiku poetry and Burdick’s hand-colored landscape photographs.  The book’s foreword was written by Diane Wakoski, and poets Naomi Shihab Nye, Jack Driscoll, Nancy Willard, Bill Heyen, and Judith Ortiz Cofer have all written wonderful endorsements describing the book as “luminous” and “remarkable.”  The book retails for $16.00 and can be ordered at any bookstore or through Eerdmans at (800) 253-7521 ext.532.

Kathleen Walsh Spencer, Registered Nurse
& MDW Member Included in Anthology
Local nurse Kathleen Walsh Spencer has been known to whisper poetry to patients to calm them through painful or frightening procedures. This poetic medicine is not surprising since the nurse is a poet! Spencer and thirteen other contemporary nurse poets are featured in the newly released book The Poetry of Nursing: Poems and Commentaries of Leading Nurse Poets. Spencer, the only Michigan poet included in the book, has practiced nursing at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak for most of her twenty five year career. “My experiences at Beaumont have inspired many poems….”
Spencer, who attended the Walloon Writers’ Retreat in 2003, has two masters degrees, but neither in creative writing. “I have taken every adult-education class in writing I can,” she says, “such as local workshops with Springfed Arts, and national workshops with University of Iowa and Sarah Lawrence College.” Spencer’s poems have appeared in Intensive Care: More Prose and Poetry by Nurses (C. Davis and J. Schaefer, editors), The Clackamas Literary Review, U.S. Catholic, Nimrod, Rosebud, Red Cedar Review and many others. The Poetry of Nursing, is published by The Kent State University Press (ISBN 0-87338-848-8), 206 pp. You may order directly by making a check out for $24 to Kathleen Walsh Spencer, 4560 Stoneleigh Road, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302, FAX 248 258-5415, kathleenrn@mindspring.com

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