Thanks to Terri Gorney for this photo from Mounds State Park and the above image as well.
"This spot where you sit is your own spot. It is this very spot and in
this very moment that you can become enlightened. You don't have to
sit beneath a special tree in a distant land."
Thich Nhat Hanh, monk, poet, and peace activist
During my two-year term as Indiana's fifth Poet Laureate, I was honored to
represent poetry in a state that has shaped my artistic vision in so many ways and
given me such a wealth of subjects to explore. I am filled with gratitude as I think
of the people who welcomed me into their libraries and classrooms or joined me for
programs at historic sites and parks. Thank you for your invitations, participation at
my events, and readership of this website.
If you would like for me to present a poetry workshop or reading at your library,
school, literary club or other organization, please email me through this website.
Shari Wagner, Indiana Poet Laureate 2016-2017 www.shariwagnerpoet.com/
Matthew Graham: Indiana Poet Laureate, 2020-2021
Matthew Graham from Evansville became Indiana's seventh Poet Laureate on January 1, 2020. He is the author of four books of poems, including The Geography of Home (Galileo Press, 2018), and his work has earned many awards, including a Pushcart Prize, an Academy of American Poets Award, two grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Artist of the Year Award from the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana. Matthew recently retired from the University of Southern Indiana where he taught creative writing and literature. He's also worked with diverse writing groups such as high school students and community writing groups and co-founded and co-directed (with Thomas Wilhelmus) The Ropewalk Writers' Retreat, a summer program that brought national and international writers to New Harmony, Indiana for 22 years, and the Ropewalk Visiting Writers Series, which brought prominent fiction and non-fiction writers and poets to the USI campus for free public readings.
Marcus Wicker on The Geography of Home:
"With longing, elegiac notes, wry humor, and an Edward Hopper-esque paint brush, Matthew Graham traverses the topography of a life made satisfyingly whole through a steadfast examination of the everyday, the cosmopolitan, and the contemplative. It's a potent combination that reminds me, in this moment of political divisiveness, that unwavering interiority is the first step toward bridging the invisible boundaries that divide us. THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOME marks a poet at the height of his powers: wise, stinging, and wonderfully alive. You have to read these poems."
Click here to read Matthew's poem "Terminal" on the Indiana Humanities website.
Matthew Graham from Evansville became Indiana's seventh Poet Laureate on January 1, 2020. He is the author of four books of poems, including The Geography of Home (Galileo Press, 2018), and his work has earned many awards, including a Pushcart Prize, an Academy of American Poets Award, two grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Artist of the Year Award from the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana. Matthew recently retired from the University of Southern Indiana where he taught creative writing and literature. He's also worked with diverse writing groups such as high school students and community writing groups and co-founded and co-directed (with Thomas Wilhelmus) The Ropewalk Writers' Retreat, a summer program that brought national and international writers to New Harmony, Indiana for 22 years, and the Ropewalk Visiting Writers Series, which brought prominent fiction and non-fiction writers and poets to the USI campus for free public readings.
Marcus Wicker on The Geography of Home:
"With longing, elegiac notes, wry humor, and an Edward Hopper-esque paint brush, Matthew Graham traverses the topography of a life made satisfyingly whole through a steadfast examination of the everyday, the cosmopolitan, and the contemplative. It's a potent combination that reminds me, in this moment of political divisiveness, that unwavering interiority is the first step toward bridging the invisible boundaries that divide us. THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOME marks a poet at the height of his powers: wise, stinging, and wonderfully alive. You have to read these poems."
Click here to read Matthew's poem "Terminal" on the Indiana Humanities website.
My new book of poems, The Farm Wife's Almanac, was shortlisted for the 2020
Indiana Authors Award and is available through Cascadia Publishing House.
Listen to Garrison Keillor read "The farm wife turns off the TV evangelist."
"'Iva's tongue was honey-sweet and stung like a bee,' the poet writes, an apt description
of Wagner's own poetic gifts, on full display in The Farm Wife's Almanac. Rich in pathos
and humor, this is a collection that embodies the culture from which it was birthed, a
true celebration of living close to the land."
Todd David, Author, Native Species and Winterkill
"The farm wife names children after beloved cows, plays Rook, and wants to be buried
in a root cellar. In poem after poem we see what might appear to be a sheltered, insular
life in its true and astonishing expansiveness. These are poems of both intensity and calm
beauty, transformative in their vision of the holiness in the everyday."
Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner, Author, What Cannot Be Fixed and
Poetry Editor, The Christian Century
"Wagner gently lifts the life of a farm wife into view, then dazzles the reader with insights
that surprise and enlarge, drawing us into the history of both restriction and wonder, so
that we too can imagine 'releasing the parachutes of milkweed' for the return of 'whirling
monarchs so thick they block the sun.'"
Jean Janzen, Author, What the Body Knows
Matt Pelsor of ALL IN interviewed me and all of the poets shortlisted for the Indiana Author Awards:
www.wfyi.org/programs/all-in/radio/The-Shortlist-The-Best-of-2020-Indiana-Poetry
www.wfyi.org/programs/all-in/radio/The-Shortlist-The-Best-of-2020-Indiana-Poetry
 Photo of Mounds SP by Shari Wagner
Poetry Workshops
At Mounds State Park Anderson, Indiana In 2020 through the Arts in the Parks and Historic Places program, I offered two poetry writing workshops at Mounds State Park. Each event included a hike with a site naturalist, a discussion of prompts and models, and collaborative and individual writing exercises. Visit my ARTS IN THE PARKS page to read collaborative and individual poems from these workshops, as well as my previous workshops at Limberlost State Historic Site and the Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site. New Anthology by Indiana University Press!
I'm excited to have two poems in An Indiana Christmas, edited by Bryan Furuness. Here's a link to more information about the book and how to order it: An Indiana Christmas "You will find the spirit of Christmas in frozen fields, candle-lit faces, and wood-burning stoves; it's there on chicken farms, in barns where suspended dust looks holy, and in songs echoing alleluias. The spirit sits before us at extended dining room tables snug with family, friends, casseroles, crockpots, and plates stamped with holly. In these stories, essays, and poems, some of our best Indiana authors gift us with writing that glimmers, shining a light on who we were and who we are. An Indiana Christmas is a curl-up book you'll savor year after year." ~Margaret McMullan, author of Where the Angels Lived |
 Homeschooled students creating poems at one of my Limberlost workshops
Poetry Workshop at the Limberlost
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Photo by Shari Wagner
"Poetry Features" Page
Click on "Poetry Features" to read poems and interviews with many Indiana
poets. Here's a list of all the poets in the order that their features appear:
2017 2016
Ross Gay Mitchell L. H. Douglas
Lee Harlin Bahan Maura Stanton
Marianne Boruch Linda Neal Reising
Doris Lynch Kyle Craig
Orlando Ricardo Menes Edward Byrne
Nancy Chen Long Arts in the Parks Poets 2016: Dan Carpenter Vienna Bottomley, Joyce Brinkman,
Helen Frost Liza Hyatt, and Kevin McKelvey
Adrian Matejka Jessica D. Thompson
Elizabeth Weber Poets in the Prairie Writers Guild
Marc Hudson David Shumate
Stephen R. Roberts Thomas Alan Orr
Nancy Pulley
Click on "Poetry Features" to read poems and interviews with many Indiana
poets. Here's a list of all the poets in the order that their features appear:
2017 2016
Ross Gay Mitchell L. H. Douglas
Lee Harlin Bahan Maura Stanton
Marianne Boruch Linda Neal Reising
Doris Lynch Kyle Craig
Orlando Ricardo Menes Edward Byrne
Nancy Chen Long Arts in the Parks Poets 2016: Dan Carpenter Vienna Bottomley, Joyce Brinkman,
Helen Frost Liza Hyatt, and Kevin McKelvey
Adrian Matejka Jessica D. Thompson
Elizabeth Weber Poets in the Prairie Writers Guild
Marc Hudson David Shumate
Stephen R. Roberts Thomas Alan Orr
Nancy Pulley
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"Your Poems" Page
Visit "Your Poems" to read submissions written in response to monthly prompts I gave during 2016-2017. You will find poems and photographs celebrating Indiana places, people, animals, plants, and history. Many thanks to all the Hoosier poets who contributed to this feature! |
The Lerner Theatre, Elkhart / Shari Wagner
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"Hoosier Quilt"
In honor of its 50th Anniversary, the Indiana Arts Commission asked me to write a poem celebrating the arts in Indiana, a piece that became a part of this beautifully photographed video. Grace Milligan, State Champion for Poetry Out Loud (2016), reads my poem. Original music was composed by Timothy Carlos. Think Ahead Studios in Indianapolis produced the video. |
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