Black Lawrence Press is featuring a poem-a-day from their impressive catalogue of poets during April. Today, a short bit from my forthcoming BLP chapbook, “Far Enough: A Western in Fragments”:
Tag: Joe Wilkins
Read This – Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped
Last week, in my course this semester on rural America in contemporary literature, we started reading Jesmyn Ward’s memoir, Men We Reaped. We’d read a novel and a book of short fiction previously, Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage, respectively, and I have to admit I was anxious about the move to nonfiction, fearing my students might not fully appreciate the difference, might not understand Ward is telling a given story, rather than creating a story. I was worried the class might leap to judgement before trying out understanding, might be confused by and even afraid of a culture most of them do not share.
I was straight wrong. My students handled the transition with wisdom and care. They articulated to each other the fundamental differences between the project of a memoir and the project of a novel or collection of short fiction; they talked and wondered and built metaphors of understanding. It was the kind of thoughtful, probing, compassionate discussion that almost makes you want to weep for how brilliant your students are, and how special a place the college classroom really is.
But I have to thank Jesmyn Ward, too. She’s written the finest investigation of race, violence, masculinity, and rural poverty I’ve ever read. The achronological, back-and-forth structure; the sharp, angry voice; the clarity of observation and investigation–this is simply a necessary American memoir. Steel yourself for a heart-rending, hard-hitting story, and go read it now.
Video from the William Stafford Celebration at Linfield College
A little late with this, but here’s a video of me reading a Stafford poem and one of my own at the William Stafford Centennial Celebration here at Linfield from this January.
2014 Terroir Creative Writing Festival
Been a real joy to join, and be so embraced by, the writing community here at Linfield, in McMinnville, and across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. And I’m really delighted to be part of the 5th Annual Terroir Creative Writing Festival this year. I’ll be teaching a craft class, Notes Toward Evocative Prose: What We Really Mean to Say, and doing a poetry reading with Maggie Chula, Paulann Petersen, and my wonderful colleague Lex Runciman.
AWP
I’m headed to Seattle soon, where I’m jazzed to check out lots of readings and panels, buy lots of books, and sign a few books and talk about landscape myself. Here’s the official schedule:
| Thursday, February 27, 2014 |
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1:00 pm to 2:00 pm |
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| Spot: 502 | Author Signing: Wilkins, Joe Organization Name: Fugue Literary Journal / Idaho MFA |
2:00 pm to 3:00 pm |
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| Spot: 1201 | Author Signing: Wilkins, Joe Organization Name: Michigan State University Press |
| Friday, February 28, 2014 |
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11:00 am to 12:00 pm |
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| Spot: Q21 | Author Signing: Wilkins, Joe Organization Name: Terrain Publishing |
| Saturday, March 1, 2014 |
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12:00 pm to 1:15 pm |
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| Willow Room, Sheraton Seattle, 2nd Floor | S169. Pacific Northwest Authors Speak About Their Landscape . (Kim Barnes, Bharti Kirchner, Joe Wilkins, William Dietrich, Claire Davis) How important is geography when pursuing literary work, be it poetry, fiction, or nonfiction? Accomplished Pacific Northwest authors who are known to derive inspiration from their scenic land will answer that question. This diverse group will read short selections to illustrate how the setting, combined with imagination, memory, and personal interpretation, plays a large role in their stories. To be followed by a moderated discussion detailing tips and techniques that can make the landscape come alive on your pages.
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Two Poems at Terrain.org
Couldn’t be happier to have two poems featured today at Terrain.org, one of the finest environmental magazines out there. Big thanks to Simmons Buntin, Derek Sheffield, and the rest of the Terrain crew!
Blogtalk Interview
I recently spoke with Stephen W. Long, author of the novel There’s a Somewhere, about writing, teaching, and the power of literature; you can listen in here.
The Mountain and the Fathers Wins 2014 GLCA New Writers Award
Really pleased (read: damned ecstatic) to announce The Mountain and the Fathers has won the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award in Nonfiction. The New Writers Award brings winning writers to GLCA campuses for readings and class visits and has previously recognized the likes of Louise Erdrich, Alice Munro, Richard Ford, Kim Addonizio, Andrew Hudgins, Elizabeth Rosner, Ander Monson, Mary Szybist, and Alan Heathcock, among many others.
Here’s the citation from the judges, which has me blushing and feeling really good about things:
The 2014 winner for creative non-fiction is Joe Wilkins, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry, published by Counterpoint Press. Our judges note:
The Big Dry of eastern Montana makes for a subject of rich complexity. Joe Wilkins evokes place like Willa Cather. That is, place begins as a kind of raw, wide-open poetry. But Wilkins tells a different story. This is about the author’s search for a model of fatherhood, to fill spaces left empty by the death of his father. Wilkins strikes with staggering, melancholy, progressively self-reflective prose that, in part, inhabits the sparseness of the part of Montana where he was born and grew up. Yet his prose also pushes against what might be considered the standard fare of writing fixed in the American West. He addresses memory and the inability to remember in lyrical prose that is, at times, achingly beautiful yet never pretentious or sentimental and never cold. With exquisite control at both the structural and sentence level, he displays both a surety and openness to question, particularly with regard to class and masculinity without theorizing or naming them as such.
Nonfiction Editor at High Desert Journal
I’m excited to announce that I’m joining Charles Finn and the editorial team at High Desert Journal as Nonfiction Editor. HDJ is a semi-annual journal of literary and visual art from and about the American West and in past issues has published a veritable who’s who of contemporary western writers, including William Kittredge, Kim Barnes, Rick Bass, Craig Childs, Amy Irvine, John Daniel, Charles Goodrich, David James Duncan, Kim Stafford, Melissa Mylchreest, Brandon R. Schrand, Maya Jewell Zeller, Mary Sojourner, Russell Rowland, and Robert Wrigley, among many, many others.
Though I’m mostly just excited to get reading, I’m especially interested in narrative and lyric essays that challenge our usual notions (whether historical, political, geographic, or what have you) of the West, as well as work that addresses poverty, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. So if you’ve got something that might fit, send it my way!
Essay at High Country News
High Country News has just posted the full text of my essay “Reconciling Family Narrative with Textbook History in Montana’s Big Horn Valley.” Though I really enjoyed researching and writing this one, it means even more to me now, as my grandmother recently passed away. She read an earlier draft, but I would have loved for her to see the piece in print. I miss her.
