Rock Tree Bird

Description: 2018 Nebraska Book Award
​2018 WILLA Literary Award

This collection of poems by the former State Poet of Nebraska covers significant emotional territory while remaining firmly grounded in the landscape. From memories of the isolation and beauty of growing up on a farm, to a burgeoning awareness as a teenager of the economic and cultural forces waged against family farming, to coming to terms with the legacies of her parents after their passing, and, finally, arriving at an appreciation of nature and the environment wherever and whenever she finds it, Twyla M. Hansen offers poems that are alternately sad, sweet, funny, moving, human, and humane.

Brief description: Twyla M. Hansen was selected to a five-year term as Nebraska State Poet in 2013. She has conducted creative writing presentations through Humanities Nebraska since 1992 and the Nebraska Arts Council since 2013. She currently serves as a co-director of the new website Poetry from the Plains: A Nebraska Perspective supported by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Twyla has six previous books of poetry, including Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet (with Linda M. Hasselstrom), 2012 Winner of the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry and Finalist for both the WILLA Literary Award and the High Plains Book Award; Prairie Suite: A Celebration (with Paul A. Johnsgard); and Potato Soup, 2012 Winner of the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. Her poems and prose have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Poetry Out Loud Anthology (www.poetryoutloud.org), Down To the Dark River: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems About the Mississippi River (Louisiana Literature Press), Thinking Continental: Exploring, Surveying, and Inhabiting Macrospace, (University of Nebraska Press), Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (University of Nebraska Press), plus others, and in periodicals such as Ascent, Briar Cliff Review, Canary, Crab Orchard Review, Ellipsis, Kalliope, Laurel Review, Midwest Quarterly, Natural Bridge, Nebraska Life, Neihardt Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Organization & Environment, Paddlefish, Palo Alto Review, Plains Song Review, Platte Valley Review, Prairie Schooner, Prairie Fire Newspaper, South Dakota Review, plus nonfiction articles, book reviews, and many more. Her poems have been read on The Writer's Almanac, filmed by NET Nebraska, transcribed for NWU Women's Chorus and commissioned by the National Arbor Day Foundation. She lives in Lincoln with her husband and three cats on a wooded and wildflowered acre that was awarded the Mayor's Conservation Landscape Award in 1994.

Review Quotes: "Against 'the day's news, ' Nebraska state poet Twyla Hansen tells a story of childhood on a homestead where 'It was miles to anywhere and the center of our universe.' Yet it is with her mother's dying that this reader is most moved: love for the land, the sunrise, all ever present in each poem here, for life. Through poems that speak of local richness, wildlife, and stars, Hansen builds her new book."--Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid