Yay! I’ve just received blurbs from Naomi Shihab Nye, Lisa Lewis, and Susana H. Case for my forthcoming chapbook UNCLOSE THE DOOR from Gold Quoin Press about Matilda Fletcher, the nineteenth century suffragist, lecturer, and poet, my great-great-great-grandmother, and the subject of my dissertation.
When Naomi was the visiting writer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the spring 2009 I took her master poetry/nonfiction workshop. I’d been enamored with her writing since I’d read her poetry in various literary journals and attended her reading at Split this Rock in 2008. Here’s a video someone took of the last poem she read from Honeybee. (FYI: the footage is shaking, but the sound is perfect. It’s a little easier to just listen to the recording).
I really enjoyed Naomi’s class and the one-on-one tutorial with her over an my essay. The poems in UNCLOSE THE DOOR come from the series on Matilda Fletcher I had begun that semester and a series that would become my dissertation, many of them I brought to that workshop. Naomi offered encouragement to continue working on the series. I loved researching Matilda, a strong, powerful, inspiring woman in my family. When Naomi wasn’t being a topnotch teacher, editor, fellow poet, and peer, she gave an amazing reading at the Great Plains Art Museum that connected with the audience. I think of her each time I step up to the microphone.
What a fascinating, eloquent way to open history, to enter rooms of rich voices and care which precede our own time - Laura Madeline Wiseman skillfully honors the stories of her ancestors and all our lives by inviting us to enter with her. ~Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Honeybee and You and Yours
Thanks, Naomi!
I’m a big fan of Lisa Lewis’ work, the style of her poems, the perspective she takes on in Unbeliever, Silent Treatment, and her chapbook Story Box. Her feisty, smart poetry continuously inspires my own work.
Because, as history has shown, they are so often erased, preserving the stories of the foremothers may be the ultimate feminist act. Laura Madeline Wiseman’s Unclose the Door performs artistic homage to a character from the poet’s own family tree—suffragist, lecturer, and inventor Matilda Fletcher—by giving her voice in this collection. Following the tough, thoughtful Matilda through intimacy, loss, and activism, Wiseman packs these poems with historical detail and insights into Fletcher’s personal interactions—and adventures—in elegant, compelling poetic language.
~Lisa Lewis, author of Vivisect and Unbeliever
Thanks, Lisa!
I started reading Susana’s poetry in literary journals and then in her lovely chapbooks The Cost of Heat and The Manual of Practice Sexual Advice. Desire, heat, and connection permeate her work, themes that connect with UNCLOSE THE DOOR and Matilda’s life long loves. I was so tickled when she said “yes!” to my query about interviewing her for my blog series and feature on chapbooks. When I sent her the questions for the interview, she was in Budapest (it was the summer) and planned to finish the interview on her new ipad, which she hadn’t done before, to compose the interview. I couldn’t help but imagine some distant foreign city where language melts around you and you try to do your own work, sipping rich small cups of coffee.
Linked through her family history to Matilda Fletcher—suffragist, writer, lecturer, inventor (of an improved portable trunk), and the subject of the well-crafted work in Unclose the Door—Laura Madeline Wiseman’s chapbook should interest all readers of poetry, not only those interested in historical poems. Politically aware, Wiseman’s writing in poems like “Judge Hilton and the Women’s Hotel: Matilda Lectures” illustrates the tribulations of an unescorted woman’s negotiation of public space in that period. Wiseman uses letters and other narrative forms within her chapbook evoke a linear timeline in 19th century America and a vivid personality on the page. Images of Fletcher—her travels with Susan B. Anthony, the contexts of her lectures, her reaction to the proposal of her second husband—leap from the poems.
- Susana H. Case, author of The Cost of Heat and The Scottish Café
Thanks, Susana! And yay! I talked to the press a little earlier in the week and the editor is looking at mid-October to begin production of UNCLOSE THE DOOR. How exciting!