Lake Superior Writers Poet Laureate

2010-2012 Duluth Poet Laureate

Lake Superior Writers named Sheila Packa Duluth Poet Laureate on April 21, 2008
Lake Superior Writers established the position of Duluth Poet Laureate in 2006 as a way of honoring area poets and encouraging the enjoyment of poetry.

Duluth poet Sheila Packa has been selected as the 2010-12 Duluth Poet Laureate, in an open selection process by the Lake Superior Writers' poet laureate committee. For her two year term, Ms. Packa will receive an honorarium of $3,000 and will organize five public events. An inaugural reading will be presented in the Fall, 2010.

A crowning ceremony will be held on Sunday, May 2nd, 2 pm. at the Harbor City International School in downtown Duluth. Ms. Packa is the first Duluth woman to receive the honor.

The Duluth poet laureate project was founded in 2005 and is funded by donations from area colleges, bookstores, The Friends of the Duluth Public Library, the Duluth Public Arts Commission, and the Arrowhead Reading Council. A 13-person advisory committee assists the poet laureate to implement programming during the two year term. Lake Superior Writers is the sponsoring organization for the Duluth Poet Laureate Project.

Bart Sutter (2006/08) and Jim Johnson (2008/10) were Duluth's first and second poet laureates. Duluth is the first Minnesota city to select and support a poet laureate in modern times, followed by Red Wing, Saint Paul, and Winona. Robert Bly was recently chosen by Governor Tim Pawlenty as the Minnesota state poet laureate.

For additional information, please contact Lake Superior Writers, 218-722-3904, www.lakesuperiorwriters.org

Sponsoring Organizations

Sponsoring organizations for the Duluth 2010-2012 poet laureate project included Lake Superior Writers, the Zeppa Family Foundation, the Duluth Public Arts Commission, UMD English Department, UMD Academic Affairs, UMD College of Liberal Arts, the College of St. Scholastica English Department, Lake Superior College, Friends of the Duluth Public Library, Northern Lights Books & Gifts, Arrowhead Reading Council, and Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

About Sheila Packa

Sheila Packa, poet, social worker, teacher, mother, lives in Duluth. Ms. Packa grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range, and she is the granddaughter of Finnish immigrants. Her work, influenced by the Finnish language, explores the theme of migrations (of birds, grandmothers, and desire) and the natural world.

She has published poetry, short stories and essays in many literary magazines, including Ploughshares. Her poems have been in several anthologies, including Finnish-North American Literature in English (Mellen Press, 2009), Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press, 2009) and To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present (New Rivers Press). Poetry Harbor published her first chapbook, Always Saying Good-bye. Dear Bird, Fearful Journey and Echo & Lightning are chapbooks with an audio CD with cellist Kathy McTavish, available at Northern Lights Bookstore and at her performances. These works are also available as MP3 downloads on her website. Her book of poems, The Mother Tongue, published by Calyx Press Duluth in 2007, received a NEMBA honorable mention. She received two Arrowhead Regional Arts Council fellowships for poetry, an ARAC Career Opportunity grant, two Loft McKnight Awards, (poetry, 1986 and prose, 1996) and a Loft Mentor Award in poetry (1995).

Her work is available on her website at www.sheilapacka.com.

A poem by Sheila Packa:

loom

When I was a girl, my mother
tore suits and dresses into strips
and wound them up into balls.
Wool and cotton, silks and satins,
dark rainbows that couldn't be clouded
by the dust that rose in that destruction,
geological hues tied with a zeal,
the cat chased those tails endlessly.
When all this was done,
my mother descended with her baskets
to the loom in the basement,
that big creaking frame
threaded with string sunsets and
daybreak brilliance, with foot pedals
bigger than a piano's and rhythms
that were like shifts in the heart
or quakes underground.
She threw the shuttle and pounded the bar
against the rags of the past
so rugs came reeling out,
all warp and weft and her breathless.
Even now I feel her rhythms
in the everyday disasters,
feel the need to tear my clothes, get down
to the most basic elements.
I want to - somehow in the heartbeat
of the dark and in the lap of great effort -
take the threads of the past
and bring up something new.

Need info? Contact pl@lakesuperiorwriters.org or call 218-722-3094. Please allow 7 - 10 days to receive a reply.