Spirit Lake Poetry Series, in partnership with the Arrowhead Library System, will host an outreach reading by northland poets Douglas Skrief, Michelle Matthees, and Julie Gard, at 7 p.m. April 12 m in the International Falls Library lobby.
Skrief, a native of International Falls, is a former fellow of the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. His poetry has appeared in The Paris Review and on BBC Radio. His poem “Mansefeldt Barn,” set to music by Kinley Lange, was premiered at the 2009 Cherry Spring Festival in Fredericksburg, Texas.
As a recipient of a 2006 McKnight Individual Artist Fellowship, Skrief composed a collection of poems that was published in London in 2009 by Starhaven Press and was featured as “Poem of the Week” in The (London) Guardian newspaper.
Matthees is the author of three poetry collections published by Press This! She has received grants, awards and fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, ARAC, and Associated Writing Programs.
Matthees was a 2009 Jerome/ SASE Emerging Writer. Her poems have appeared in The Bloomsbury Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, PANK, The Bellingham Review, The Prose Poem Project, and more.
Gard has published two chapbooks, Russia in 17 Objects and Obscura: The Daguerreotype Series, along with prose poetry and short fiction in journals and anthologies including The Prose Poem Project, Clackamas Literary Review, Dust and Fire, and Crab Orchard Review.
She is the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and ARAC/McKnight Foundation.
Gard teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin Superior.
Admission to this event is free and open to the public.
