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mrissaI was reading the paper while I ate my delicious lunch (I love peak garden season), and I glanced down at the local news section. "Huh," I thought, "that lady looks like Joyce!" And in fact it was Joyce--my old creative writing prof Joyce Sutphen has been named Minnesota's Poet Laureate, only the second ever. Hurrah for her!
In the article about it, she pledges to "celebrate voices in the state." As a writer of speculative fiction, I almost always assume that people who say things like that are not talking about my voice. I tend to think that they mean people who are writing memetic fiction or poetry, or whose nonfiction is more poetic than informed/informative. But with Joyce, I know from personal experience that she really wants to hear and celebrate all different voices in all different fields. I think one of Joyce's major gifts as a teacher and as a poet is her ability to hear what people are saying even when they're coming from somewhere completely different--and her willingness to listen and find out. This is just exactly the sort of thing I'd want in a poet laureate for the state, and I am so very pleased.
In the article about it, she pledges to "celebrate voices in the state." As a writer of speculative fiction, I almost always assume that people who say things like that are not talking about my voice. I tend to think that they mean people who are writing memetic fiction or poetry, or whose nonfiction is more poetic than informed/informative. But with Joyce, I know from personal experience that she really wants to hear and celebrate all different voices in all different fields. I think one of Joyce's major gifts as a teacher and as a poet is her ability to hear what people are saying even when they're coming from somewhere completely different--and her willingness to listen and find out. This is just exactly the sort of thing I'd want in a poet laureate for the state, and I am so very pleased.
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