Patricia Clark, Poetry

Patricia Clark

2012

Patricia Clark is Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University. Author of three volumes of poetry, Patricia’s newest book is She Walks into the Sea; she has also published a chapbook, Given the Trees. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily; she has won Mississippi Review’s Poetry Prize; and been honored as the 2nd prize winner in the 2005 Pablo Neruda/Nimrod International Journal Poetry competition. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Slate, Stand, The Gettysburg Review, and many other literary magazines. A new book of poetry, Sunday Rising, is forthcoming in early 2013 from Michigan State University Press. In 2011, Patricia’s work was nominated twice for “Best of the Net” and she received a Pushcart Prize nomination for her poem If Riptides were a Gateway.

Workshop: Learning to Love the Earth

Scottish naturalist and writer John Muir wrote, “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown; for going out, I found, was really going in.” This is a workshop for writers at any level wanting to learn how to go deeper into their material, seeking ways to begin, and looking around for vibrant details and sparks of language to take them there. The “earth” we end up loving won’t necessarily be nature or the country—but may be the city, our mundane “regular” world, and other people. As Stephen Dobyns writes, “Subject matter begins when something takes our attention, a word that derives from the Latin verb attendere, meaning to stretch toward, to give heed to.” Our models will be poets as various as Jane Hirshfield, Robert Frost, Matthew Dickman, Ted Kooser, Heather McHugh, Eamon Grennan & many others.

Patricia Clark on the Web