Council for Wisconsin Writers

Supporting Wisconsin writers from 1964 to 2022

Edna Meudt

by

Letters of Gratitude

The Council for Wisconsin Writers’ mission — “to recognize and celebrate Wisconsin writers and to promote awareness of our state’s great literary heritage” — is highly and constantly gratifying. Recipients’ appreciation and gratitude makes it doubly so. Letters, such as two received recently from this year’s Major Achievement Award winner, DSC05488Milwaukee historian John Gurda, and the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award winner Catherine Jagoe highlight that.

With permission from John and Catherine, we are pleased to share their letters:

From John Gurda to Council for Wisconsin Writers President Geoff Gilpin:

“Dear Geoff:

I’ve already expressed my gratitude to (board member) Erik Richardson via email, but I thought I’d use this somewhat more formal channel to thank you and the CWW for this year’s Major Achievement Award. It’s obviously a career capstone, and one I find enormously satisfying. As I approach seventy, I’m amazed that I’ve been able to make a living as a Milwaukee historian for all these years–a job for which there were no posted openings. The CWW’s Achievement Award confirms my choice of careers and encourages me to keep moving into the future down the path of the past.

All the Best,

John Gurda”

DSC05460

From Catherine Jagoe to Geoff Gilpin:

“Dear Geoff,

I would like to reiterate my heartfelt thanks to the Council for Wisconsin Writers for the Edna Meudt prize I was recently awarded for Bloodroot. I felt that I didn’t do justice at the award ceremony to the depth of my appreciation for the work that the Council does to celebrate and encourage Wisconsin writers. When Karla Huston called to tell me about the award I was so overcome, I actually wept.

This book was a very long time in the making — I had been revising and sending it to contests from almost ten years, and it had been a finalist or semi-finalist numerous times. The process of submitting a book manuscript is arduous and expensive and I had just about run out of hope. I decided I would send the manuscript to one last contest and then put it aside and move on. To my astonishment, it won that contest, the Settlement House American Poetry Prize.

Because the book explores my experience as a newcomer and foreigner, the nature of home and the process of uprooting and re-rooting in Wisconsin, it meant a very great deal to me that it won the CWW award. It allowed me to feel accepted in this community of writers instead of being a perpetual outsider. As another immigrant writer put it recently, it’s like getting a big hug from your adopted home.

The $500 and week’s residency will buy me some crucial time to start generating new work. So please thank all the board members again from me personally at your next meeting.

Warmly,

Catherine Jagoe”

On behalf of Wisconsin writers, CWW again congratulates John and Catherine on their stellar work. More about these writers is at John’s website johngurda.com and Catherine’s website www.catherinejagoe.com.

More information about CWW, its annual contests and how to become a member is at wiswriters.org.

 

 

 

 

 

by

Edna Meudt Award Winner Creates New Poetry Form

As the Council for Wisconsin Writers continues introductions of the 2015 CWW contests winners who received their awards at this year’s CWW Awards Banquet, this blog post features the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award winner, University of Wisconsin’s Program in Creative Writing co-founder, and professor of English and poetry Ronald Wallace.                                                                                                   2015 Edna Meult Poetry . Ronald Wallace . June 2016

Here are the judge’s comments about Wallace’s book of poems, For Dear Life:

“There’s nothing more refreshing than unquestioned skill, and that discipline and lyrical dexterity in evident in every single one of the poems in this addictive volume. These are stories firmly rooted in the world, gorgeous and revelatory, deftly framed in classic forms that bolster the narrative. No matter how wildly poetry veers into odd and experimental, powerful poems that explore and affirm life will always be the cornerstone of the canon. And Ronald Wallace is at the forefront of that vital, important work.”

Following are Wallace’s remarks about his award:

“My grateful thanks to the Council for Wisconsin Writers for honoring my work with the Edna Meudt award. I met Edna Meudt when I first came to Wisconsin back in the 1970s and was immediately impressed with her and her work—she was a real force for poetry in Wisconsin. So, to get an award in her name really means a lot.

Getting the award made me think back to the first time I submitted an entry in the contest.  It was 1981, my first book manuscript had been rejected ninety-nine times over five years in evolving versions, and had been accepted by the University of Missouri Press on the one-hundredth.  In those days the Council invited finalists to the award ceremony without telling them whether they’d won or not.  I went to the ceremony and participated on a panel on regional poetry and then they announced that someone else won the award! I thought, wait!  You mean there are other good poets in Wisconsin?  And indeed there are, many many terrific Wisconsin poets, so it’s especially nice to be recognized among them.”

Frankly, I was confident about my new book, since there are at least twenty poems in it that are brilliant, that are truly immortal.  And I’m not talking about my poems, which are pretty good, but about the haikus by Basho and Issa that are included in the book. Twenty of the poems are in a form I developed and am calling the haiku sonnet.  That is, the last words of each line of each sonnet, read vertically top to bottom, form a haiku by one of the classic Japanese haiku masters.  I’m going to read just two of those. Thanks again to the Council, and to judge Patricia Smith, for this wonderful award.”

In addition to reading these remarkable poems, it was delightful to find the haiku Wallace created from the last word of each line in each poem:

 

Song of Myself

             after Issa

I think it’s enough just to sit and meditate, heedless

of the needs of others close to us and of

their perpetual demands that seem to sap the

strength from us.  My doorway and the morning dew

are all I need to make my day, and that

is where I’ll plan to be.  And if that marks

me misanthropic, if that threatens to end our

relationship, I say that is not my problem, closing

my door.  Thoreau knew how to spend the day

alone with his peas and beans and ledgers, and we

can do the same.  So much for the ties that bind.

“We must find our occasions in ourselves,”

said self-reliant Thoreau.  And so I’m going to sing to

myself.  And the birds. And you.  And one or two others.

 

Rounded With a Sleep

            after Issa

My two-year-old granddaughter won’t go to bed.  Life,

she thinks, is too good to sleep away, so, suddenly, she is

loquacious.  Things that had held no interest all day—a

wooden block, a plastic doll, a piece of lint, a dewdrop–

are now worthy of her full attention.  Oh, yes,

she is much too busy to attend to her mother, and I

am but a small annoyance, an impediment.  I am

of little consequence.  Bedtime?  She’s not convinced.

And so we sit back and let her regale us.  Life

is something she knows a lot about.  She is

talking on and on to herself, she is a stream, a

flow, an ocean of talk, and we are but a dewdrop.

It’s late.  We know this is going to have to end, and

we’re going to have to convince her.  And yet, and yet.