I’m late getting this up, but I have an essay, “Dry Season“–all about landscape, choice, and generations–in the October issue of The Sun. You can only read a selection online, but if you don’t subscribe to The Sun, well, you should.
News
Linfield Live
So pleased to be part of the amazing Readings at the Nick at Linfield College. And now they’re streaming readings live and archiving them! You can check it out here.
The Write Question
This summer, while traveling all over Oregon, Washington, and Montana to read from When We Were Birds, I got the chance to speak with The Write Question about poetry and life and making sense of life through poetry. The Write Question, hosted by Cherie Newman, is a really fabulous NPR show and podcast; if you don’t listen or subscribe, you should!
Review of When We Were Birds
Geez. This review. Kind, wise, a poem in its own right. Thanks, Melissa Mylchreest.
Joe Wilkins’ words unspool down the page like the highway runs off forever into the empty spaces of Montana’s Big Dry, the eastern reaches of the state where he was born and raised. Populated by chokecherry, dry riverbeds, overgrown roadside ditches, lean cattle and leaner people, his books—poetry, nonfiction and fiction—all speak of a world that is scarred, broken, damaged and dusty, but never irredeemable and never without beauty.
Review of Far Enough
Couldn’t be more pleased by this energetic, insightful review of Far Enough by Kathleen Benoit-Whiteley at the Billings Gazette. Really. Knowing the folks back home believe in the book is sure something. Here’s my favorite bit:
“Far Enough” takes 30 minutes to read, but its impact lingers. From raucous cowboys on a Friday night at the Ryegate Bar to a rancher’s gnawing, persistent fear of drought, and from a young girl’s fragile dreams to the harsh realities of a cowboy’s life, Wilkin’s creates a vivid tableaux of the county and its people. Friends of mine, ranchers outside of Park City, agreed, saying that “Far Enough” is the real deal.
Poetry Roadshow
Taking When We Were Birds on the road over the next couple of weeks. I’ll be winding my way through Spokane, Joseph, Missoula, and Bozeman. If you can make it, come on by and say hi!
Here are the details:
- July 7, Spokane, WA: Reading with Kate Lebo at Auntie’s Bookstore
- July 8, Spokane, WA: A memoir writing workshop for Scablands Lit
- July 10-16, Joseph, OR: Fishtrap!
- July 19, Missoula, MT: Reading at Fact & Fiction
- July 21, Bozeman, MT: Reading at The Country Bookshelf
Come Study With Me at Fishtrap
Looking for a summer writing conference? It doesn’t get much better than Fishtrap. Mountains, beautiful waters, and loads of talented, generous writers, including Justin Hocking, Laura Pritchett, Marjorie Sandor, Erika L. Sanchez, Robert Michael Pyle, and more. I’ll be teaching a poetry craft class/workshop this summer at Fishtrap, The Landscape of the Poem: From Eden to Frontier, and I’d love to have you!
Mini-Northwest Book Tour
I’ll be taking When We Were Birds on the road in the next few days and weeks. You can find the run down below. Love to see you, if it works out!
- Wednesday, April 13: University of Idaho Alumni Reading, Moscow, ID, with Steve Coughlin and Lindsay Wilson
- Thursday, April 14: Pie & Whiskey Reading, Get Lit, Spokane, WA, with Kate Lebo, Sam Ligon, M.L. Smoker, Jess Walter, Elissa Washuta, and others
- Friday, April 15: Poets of the Northwest, Get Lit, Spokane, WA, with M.L. Smoker and Kathryn Smith
- Saturday, April 16: Layers of Landscape: Harnessing the Power of Place, Get Lit, Spokane, WA
- Monday, April 18: Wenatchee Valley College Visiting Writers Series, Wenatchee, WA, with Steve Coughlin and Anna Maria Spagna
- Wednesday, April 20: Book Launch with Mountain Writers Series at Vie de Boheme, Portland, OR
- Friday, April 22: Grass Roots Books & Music, Corvallis, OR
- Sunday, April 24: National Poetry Month Reading at Powell’s on Hawthorne, Portland, OR, with A.M. O’Malley and Kim Dower
- Thursday, April 28: Another Read Through, Portland, OR, with A. Molotkov and Jeff Alessandrelli
Two Poems at Terrain
Two poems, one from the new book, When We Were Birds, up today at Terrain, one of the best online journals out there!
Pub Day – When We Were Birds
It’s the official publication day for my third full-length collection of poetry, When We Were Birds. I’m damn proud of this one, and so pleased Billy Collins picked it out of the pile for the University of Arkansas Press. Here’s the book description from the publisher:
In When We Were Birds, Joe Wilkins wrests his attention away from the griefs, deprivations, and high prairies of his Montana childhood and turns toward “the bean-rusted fields & gutted factories of the Midwest,” toward ordinary injustice and everyday sadness, toward the imminent birth of his son and his own confusions in taking up the mantle of fatherhood, toward faith and grace, legacy and luck.
A panoply of voices are at play—the escaped convict, the late-night convenience store clerk, and the drowned child all have their say—and as this motley chorus rises and crests, we begin to understand something of what binds us and makes us human: while the world invariably breaks all our hearts, Wilkins insists that is the very “place / hope lives, in the breaking.”
Within a notable range of form, concern, and voice, the poems here never fail to sing. Whether praiseful or interrogating, When We Were Birds is a book of flight, light, and song. “When we were birds,” Wilkins begins, “we veered & wheeled, we flapped & looped— / it’s true, we flew.”
joewilkins.org 