Description: "Past Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga writes poems inspired by her time at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station in Oconomowoc"--
Brief description: Margaret Rozga is a life-long Wisconsin resident and the Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2019-2020. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021), which received an honorable mention for the Edna Meundt Poetry Book Award at the 2021 Wisconsin Writers Awards. Her work was nominated for inclusion in the 2005 Best New Poets anthology and for a Pushcart Prize, and her first book, 200 Nights and One Day (2009), was awarded a bronze medal in poetry in the 2009 Independent Publishers Book Awards and named an outstanding achievement in poetry for 2009 by the Wisconsin Library Association. Rozga has also been a resident at Shake Rag Alley; the Sundress Academy of the Arts; Write On, Door County; the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology; and the Ragdale Foundation, as well as a creative writing fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. She lives in Milwaukee.
Review Quotes:
"A magical journey through time and memory outside of ourselves using mindfulness (underrated), nostalgia, hope, and the music of the created."
-Wisconsin Writers Association
"A beautifully unified collection of new poems . . . more than ever, calling for the courage to hope."
-MidAmerica
"From the 'sparrow song' and 'dry pond, ' to the bedside of dying loved ones, to those hidden in the margins of history, these poems journey through grief toward places of hope."
-Lois Roma-Deeley, author of Like Water in the Palm of My Hand
"Words and emotions that make you feel and believe."
-Michael McDermott, Co-founder and Director, Black Earth Institute
"Rozga's poems hauntingly sing of cumulative loss and the power of nature to bring truth to our wounds."
-Jennifer Morales, author of Meet Me Halfway
"Restores our hearts and faith through the poet's wisdom and compassion."
-Jerod Santek, Founding and Artistic Director, Write On, Door County
"A hymn and prayer for healing, an act of conscience and a journey of the heart."
-Christian Knoeller, author of Completing the Circle