Spirit Lake Poetry Series will present award-winning poets Louis Jenkins and Connie Wanek in Somers Lounge at the College of St. Scholastica on Saturday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Jenkins is the author of 13 collections of poems. He has appeared on Garrison Keillor’s radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, numerous times, and was a featured reader at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Aldeburgh, England in 2007.
His work has been included in many anthologies, including The Best American Poetry (Scribners). Robert Bly has called him “the contemporary master” of prose poetry. Jenkins will be reading from his latest book, Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005. More details can be found at willothewispbooks.com.
Connie Wanek’s newest book, On Speaking Terms, was just released from Copper Canyon Press in January. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser calls Wanek “one of my favorite poets,” and Maxine Kumin says, “Wanek is a natural. Her carefully crafted poems … take us in and lift our neck hairs with the unexpected aptness of her metaphors.”
Winner of the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize and the Willow Prize in Poetry, Wanek was also named a 2006 Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. Her website is conniewanek.com.
Support for this reading has been provided by Northern Lights Books and Gifts, the Lee and Rose Warner Fund, and the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council through an appropriation from the Minnesota State Legislature.