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English prof poet of month on poetry web site
Described on its home page as “a loose association of poets willing to cast into uncharted waters,” the site offers a wide range of poetry that reflects a diversity of subjects and perspectives. Featured selections by Walker include three short works, “Little Blessing for My Floater,” “Melting Pot” and “Portrait of the Virgin Who Said No To Gabriel,” as well as a long piece, “The Aunt Joe Poem,” an incorporation of several poems previously published separately in Prairie Schooner and The Midwest Quarterly and reprinted in her fifth book, “Gaining Tiime.” “It is quite an honor to be one of the poets chosen for poet of the month,” Walker said. “The site is devoted to the work of an individual poet for a month and is an attempt to give an in-depth look at the work of the selected poet. It really is a great place to go for contemporary poetry.” Walker recently was awarded the Readers’ Choice Award from Prairie Schooner for four of her poems that appeared in its winter issue. Her sixth book of poetry, “A Deed to the Light,” was released in April by the University of Illinois Press, and is available at [www.ADeedToTheLight.com]. Another Walker poem, “Staying Power,” appeared in the May issue of Poetry magazine and is featured on the Poetry web site at [www.poetrymagazine.org/index.html]. For Walker, “A Deed to the Light,” marks a return to a more lyrical style of poetry that she said seeks to balance an inner stillness with the hustle and bustle of contemporary life. “We all feel so rushed, and there also is the speed of the culture, with its constant barrage of information, that allows no time for reflection,” Walker said. “There is a stillness or a silence at the center of things that people are longing for. People have gone back to poetry for that.” “A Deed to the Light,” Walker said, also marks a departure from her last book of poetry, “Gaining Time,” which she described as a narrative about several generations within a family. “Narrative poetry is time-driven, and I have moved away from that to the lyrical, because there is a real stillness there,” Walker said. “Lyric poetry is repetitive and sound driven, like the sound of waves on the ocean or a heartbeat in the womb.” Classic examples of such poetry, Walker said, include “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by John Keats and “Ode to a Skylark” by Percy Bysse Shelley. “You hear somebody in an act of meditation,” Walker said. “The action of the poems occurs in some way that is outside of time.” Other books of poetry by Walker include “Fugitive Angels,” “Coming Into History” and “Nailing Up the Home Sweet Home.” Her poems also have appeared in many anthologies and hundreds of journals, including American Scholar, Atlantic Monthly, Boulevard, the Courtland Review, The Chicago Tribune, Image, The Nation and Partisan Review. Her awards include the Prairie Schooner-Strousse Prize, seven Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Henry Rago Award. An Atlantic Monthly Fellow at the Bread Loaf School of English, Walker was awarded the coveted Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1998. Walker also is a playwright. Her scripts include “Inventing Montana,” “Tales From The Daily Tabloid,” “Rowing Into Light on Lake Adley” and “The Queen’s 2 Bodies: The Double Life of Elizabeth I.” They have been produced in Boston, Washington, Chicago, throughout the Midwest and in London. Her scripts have twice won the William and Arlene Lewis Playwriting Competition, a Stage Time Award from The Minneapolis Playwrights Center, the Washington National Theatre Competition and The Charlotte Repertory Theatre New Plays Competition. Walker also serves as Poetry Editor for “Christianity and Literature” and is on the Editorial Board of Shenandoah. Article by Jerry Rhodes To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here. |
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