North Dakota Is Everywhere ― An Anthology of Contemporary North Dakota Poets

Heidi Czerwiec—professor and poet—describes herself as a High Modernist, in that her work (even the free verse) pays strong attention to form and narrative. But, she says, she also uses “a postmodern sense of identity slippage, since so many of [her] projects play with narrative authority.” It is with similar authority that she worked to bring about this collection of poetry produced by native North Dakota poets. Seventeen North Dakota poets contributed to this collection, representing a range in style and subject both terse and expansive. They write about the North Dakota landscape, family heritage, and the weather, demonstrating remarkable scope and nuance. These are poets are descended from the Plains’ indigenous inhabitants and from those who emigrated here—whether from Germany, Russia, or the Scandinavian countries in the nineteenth century or more recently from other parts of the country and world. They write about the historical struggles of settlement and assimilation and about contemporary versions of those struggles in the Bakken oil patch. Some write about North Dakota from the rural settings they have known and loved for a lifetime, others from the distant vantages of nostalgia or escape, and still others from the point of view of transplants coming to terms with their new home.

Poets’ Biographies Madelyne Camrud has lived in Grand Forks for all but two years of her married life and in North Dakota all but nine months. She is the author most recently of This House Is Full of Cracks and Oddly Beautiful She received her B.A. and M.A from UND and is an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota. Heidi Czerwiec moved to Grand Forks in 2005 to teach at UND, where she also directed the UND Writers Conference for seven years. She is a poet, translator, and essayist, the author most recently of Self-Portrait as Bettie Page and of the forthcoming Sweet/Crude: A Bakken Boom Cycle.Heid E. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton and is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She is the author of four collections of poetry including National Monuments, which won a Minnesota Book Award and Cell Traffic. She teaches writing in the Low-residency MFA program of Augsburg College. Dale Jacobson has published nine volumes of poetry, including Metamorphoses of the Sleeping Beast and the book-length poem, A Walk by the River. He has taught for thirty years at UND, and is an Honorary Poet Laureate of North Dakota.Rhoda Janzen was born in Harvey, and wrote about her heritage in the New York Times #1 bestselling memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. A professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, Janzen is also the author of a collection of poems, Babel’s Stair. Robert King taught at UND from1968 to 1996. He has published two books of poetry – Old Man Laughing and Some of These Days – and a creative non-fiction book about North Dakota’s Sheyenne River, Stepping Twice into the River: Following Dakota Waters. Denise Lajimodiere is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa who spent her early years raised on the reservation. She earned degrees from UND and currently is a professor at NDSU. She is the author of Dragonfly Dance.Ed Bok Lee grew up in South Korea and North Dakota. He is the author of two national bestselling books of poetry and prose: Whorled, which won the American Book Award and Minnesota Book Award, and Real Karaoke People, winner of the PEN/Open Book Award.Lisa Linrud-Marcis grew up on her family’s farm north of Velva. She received UND’s 2011 Distinguished Thesis Award for her Master’s thesis, In Grain, which was published as a chapbook by Finishing Line Press. She currently teaches at Itasca Community College in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.Debra Marquart’s books include Everything’s a Verb, From Sweetness: Poems, and Small Buried Things. Marquart’s memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was awarded the Elle Lettres Award from Elle Magazine and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She runs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University.Tim Murphy was born in Hibbing and when he was six months old he moved to Moorhead MN. He graduated from Yale as scholar of the house in poetry in 1972. He moved to Fargo in 1976, has more than 800 poems in print, and is completing his fourteenth book.Jamie Parsley was born in Fargo, and was raised near Harwood. He is the author most recently of Fargo, 1957, which chronicled the June, 1957 tornado that struck Fargo, and That Word. He is an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota, and an Episcopal priest serving as Priest-in-Charge of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Fargo. Aaron Poochigian grew up in Grand Forks, ND and now lives in New York City. He is the author of two books of translation – Sappho’s Stung With Love and the Greek epic Jason and the Argonauts – and a book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr.David R. Solheim was born in Elgin, and taught at Dickinson State University for almost 30 years. He is the author most recently of The Landscape Listens: Poems and Green Jade and Road Men: Translations, Commentary, and Poems of China. He was selected as the North Dakota Statehood Centennial Poet, and continues as an Emeritus Associate Poet Laureate of ND. Mark Vinz was born in Rugby, and is Professor Emeritus of English at Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he served as the first (1995-98) coordinator of MSUM's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. He is the author most recently of Long Distance, The Work Is All, and In Harm’s Way, and is currently completing a collection of essays, In Search of the Geographical Center.Richard Watson teaches at Minot State University, and has been a singer/songwriter and poet here in North Dakota since 1967. He is the author of The Lost Colony, and The Lost Colony: Christmas, and more recently The Spot and Blue Jesus. He is a North Dakota Associate Poet Laureate.Larry Woiwode’s first book of poetry, Even Tide, was published in 1977, and he is the author of numerous works of prose: novels, short-story collections, memoirs, essay collections, a biography, a children’s book, and a commentary on Acts. He is a Guggenheim and a Lannan Literary Fellow and has served as North Dakota’s Poet Laureate since 1995.