the young poets assess

Finally, I’ve had a chance to go through my student evaluations for Poetry Writing, a class I taught earlier this year in the spring. Here are a few of the highlights, one has even deemed me a “poetess.” Who knew?

I truly have become a better writer and reader of poetry. This class taught me how to utilize line and meter with a variety of forms and much needed experience.

 

She is a brilliant poetess who knows her craft very well, and this shines through in the way that she teaches it. Her willingness to work with students was also admirable.

 

She is very helpful and knows how to make poetry make sense. One of the best teachers I have had my first year at college.

 

I learned how to better analyze poetry. I now take into account how it is written, what words were chosen and where the lines end.

 

Reading the poetry book by Sherman Alexie, his styles really influenced me to [be] more creative with imagery. I really liked reading poems from Native Guard as well. Reading them and then deciphering them as a class really helped me understand them better.

 

I loved the readings, the personal writing time, and the fact that there were a lot of papers to write! It was an active class!

new chapbook blurb

Yay! I just received my first blurb for my new chapbook, SHE WHO LOVES HER FATHER, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.

Leah Browning is the editor of Apple Valley Review. Way back in 2006, she published my poem now collected in the chapbook. AVR was one of the first places I published my work online because she’s such a smart editor. I just finished reading her chapbook MAKING LOVE TO THE SAME MAN FOR FIFTEEN YEARS. What a lovely collection, especially poems like “Skating,” “On the Drive Back…,” and “Learning to Play….” They have so much hope and joy. I think I’m smitten. Other poems focused on Tucson, where I also lived for four years. It was nice to read that landscape in her work. I just ordered her most recent collection, PICKING CHERRIES IN THE ESPANOLA VALLEY, published in Dancing Girl Press’s line up in 2010 with my little chapbook. I’m so excited to read more of Leah’s delightful poems.

Here’s Leah:

At the heart of Laura Madeline Wiseman’s She Who Loves Her Father is the desire for human connection in all its forms—mental, emotional, sexual, physical. Nowhere is this longing more evident than in the poignant “An Email from the Living,” in which a parent writes to a child: “you didn’t respond so/ I must have the wrong address.” It is this need, often unmet, that drives the narrators of Wiseman’s poems in this winding, often wistful collection. ~Leah Browning, author of Picking Cherries in the Española Valley and Making Love to the Same Man for Fifteen Years

Branding Girls Giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Branding Girls

by Laura Madeline Wiseman

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Branding Girls in St. Louis

As promised, here are two of the poems I read from BRANDING GIRLS in the creative writing poetry panel at MMLA.

I read five from the collection, but the door was open at the beginning of my reading and so there’s a bit of background noise in a few of the clips. I’m posting only the best.

I had a great time in STL!

Speaking of branding, I did do some tourist stuff while there, including the FREE tour of Anheuser-Bush. I’m not much for beer, any beer, American made or otherwise, but that caveat aside, Anheuser-Bush is smart in their marketing, promotion, and branding. First, the hour tour is FREE. You get to see the brewery, learn about the history of the company, and are walked around the “campus” of the company. This tour is lead by super-cute twenty-somethings who are smart, funny, and fit. They look like they would drink beer. They look like they’d be fun to hang out with. During the tour, you get to see the Clydesdale horses munching happily in an expansive arena. In the stables, the dalmatians, on cue, enter and mingle with the crowd, tails a-wagging. The dogs are friendly. They let you pet, scratch, and snap their picture. After the tour, you are given two FREE beers and as many FREE pretzels as you can eat and as much FREE Pepsi products as you can drink. Then you go home and tell all your friends about all the FREE stuff, post pictures of your FREE tour on Facebook, maybe *ahem* write about all the FREE stuff on your blog, and likely, have a new fondness, by the fact of all the FREENESS alone, for Anheuser-Bush.

Smart, smart, branding.

Live from STL

Here are two videos from my reading Friday at noon here in St. Louis at MMLA. It was a great gathering of poets, many of whom do interesting collaborative projects with art. I was in such great company. I read from BRANDING GIRLS and from the broadside collaboration I did with Kate Johnson. Here’s two of the broadsides. First, “Posturing.”

Second, “Housekeeping.”

I’ll try to post a few more once I check out the video.

This morning at 8:30 (can we say thank you daylight savings time. yes we can), I’m presenting in a panel on teaching and play. I’m very much looking forward to hearing my fellow panelist and bringing back some great teaching ideas to my classes this term.

Branding St. Louis

I’m reading from BRANDING GIRLS in the panel “Creative Writing: Poetry” this Friday at MMLA. Sunday, I join fellow DISPATCHES FROM THE CLASSROOM anthology contributors in the panel “Writers at Play: Exercises and Suggestions for the Creative Writing Classroom.” If you won’t be able to attend and still want a copy of the activity “Playing with Their Senses: The Feel of Things in the Creative Writing Classroom,” send me a note and I’ll send it your way.

Reading (poetry) at MMLA
12-1:30, Friday, November 4, 2011
St. Louis, Missouri

Reading (prose) at MMLA
8:30-10, Sunday, November 6, 2011
St. Louis, Missouri

I’m super excited for the reading and panel! I promise video clips when I return. In other news, I’m in UNL’s recent newsletter. The current issue of Cream City Review features two of poems on Matilda Fletcher from my dissertation. I’ve been working on getting stuff ready for my forthcoming chapbook SHE WHO LOVES HER FATHER from Dancing Girl Press. More on that soon.