Or why I haven’t written much this week! One of my many hats is Director of the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium at Mississippi University for Women, an annual event at which a dozen or so authors appear and read from their work. For the audience, everything seems to go seamlessly–I hope! MUW faculty give introductions,Continue reading “A Look Behind the Curtain”
Author Archives: Kendall Dunkelberg
Images and Ideas in Poems
Last week my poetry class was talking about images and ideas in poems, which has me thinking about how poets work with ideas. Images can be anything seen, felt, smelled, heard, tasted, or even imagined. So a subatomic particle, if visualized concretely in a poem, might be seen as an image. The airflow around theContinue reading “Images and Ideas in Poems”
Fruits of Summer
Time to leave the poetry biz aside for awhile and write a little about food. Our local farmer’s market has kept us awash in fresh local produce all summer (when we’ve been in town), but the thing we love most are the peaches — well, those and the tomatoes and thai eggplant and corn andContinue reading “Fruits of Summer”
Poetry Contests
Since I wrote about slams and haiku contests in my last posts, I thought I should add a little about poetry contests. I think competition is great in poetry, but poets need to beware when they enter one! The Iowa Poetry Association (for whom I have judged) is a member of the National Federation ofContinue reading “Poetry Contests”
Slam Poetry
Slam poetry has to be the complete antithesis of haiku. It is loud, long, and boisterous and only occassionally sweet or pensive. This summer I had the good fortune to return to Chicago and visit my old stomping grounds at the Green Mill Lounge on a Sunday night. Here, 23 years ago, according to MarcContinue reading “Slam Poetry”
Judging Haiku
This summer, I had the pleasure to judge a haiku contest for the Iowa Poetry Association. I’ve judged their general adult category before, so I knew this would be interesting, and I reminded myself that 100 or so haiku only meant reading 1700 syllables! So I dove right in. Of course, it was a littleContinue reading “Judging Haiku”
New Puppy
We are hosting our third foster dog from the humane society. He’s on a program called Homeward Bound that takes pets from the South, where not enough people spay and neuter, to the Northeast, where there is a shortage of pets to adopt. It’s a great program that saves a lot of lives, but theirContinue reading “New Puppy”
Exercise
This is just a quick follow-up post to yesterday’s and a note on the joys and dangers of writing exercises. This morning I wrote a poem titled Continental Divide based loosely on the exercise I described. When checking out the fact that Minnesota’s divide goes in three directions, I found the roadside marker that IContinue reading “Exercise”
Continental Divide
We were reminded of the meaning of the term “Continental Divide” a couple of times this summer when we crossed it in places you might not expect. Traveling east towards Duluth from the Mississippi Headwaters, we crossed it when we left the Mississippi River basin and entered the Great Lakes basin. We tend to thinkContinue reading “Continental Divide”
The Father of Waters or What I did on my Summer Vacation
One of the places we visited this summer was the Mississippi River. It’s hard to call this a ‘place,’ though, since we crossed and recrossed it all summer long, starting with our first trip down to Natchez to the Great Big Yam Potatoes old time music festival in May. There we walked along the bluffsContinue reading “The Father of Waters or What I did on my Summer Vacation”
Kendall Dunkelberg 