“Irreverent and imaginative, these are very funny stories. They satirize the current state of affairs in our beloved nation, and like all good . . . → Read More: Praise for The Miracle Boy]]> “What if we had the ability to make our dreams come true? In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, these stories challenge both our hopes and dreams.”—Richard Burgin, Editor, Boulevard Magazine

“Irreverent and imaginative, these are very funny stories. They satirize the current state of affairs in our beloved nation, and like all good satire they include a tone of lament: they weep for an America that (perhaps) once was, and for the America it might—with better luck—have become. Read ‘em and laugh.”—Dan Lechay, author of The Quarry, Ohio University Press Poetry Series

Steve Semken of Ice Cube Press will be taking pitches at the upcoming conference, May 2-4. I love his advice for beginning writers. It is so true. Never hide your light under a barrel. I know it seems like there are millions of writers out there especially when you . . . → Read More: Upcoming Oklahoma Writer’s Conference | Ice Cube Press]]> from the president’s blog;

Steve Semken of Ice Cube Press will be taking pitches at the upcoming conference, May 2-4. I love his advice for beginning writers. It is so true. Never hide your light under a barrel. I know it seems like there are millions of writers out there especially when you hang out with other writers, but guess what? There aren’t. Writers are a unique bred of folk. We’re obligated to share our gift with the world. So, listen to what Mr. Semken has to say and get your manuscripts ready and polished. He’s attending to conference to find folks to publish!

Q: Has someone been instrumental in inspiring you as a writer?

A: I was originally inspired by a talk of Barry Lopez’s on nature and the environment. I was captivated by the inquisition to details, the use of words as almost tricks and teachings at the same time. After this I begin to discover devour environmental writing by a many contemporary authors: William Kittridge, Scott Russell Sanders, Gary Synder, Terry Tempest Williams, and the like.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for beginning writers? If so, what are they?

A: I believe you should be brave and not hide your writing. I choose to share my writing with six people that were alive and find out what they thought. There is no better schooling than this to arrange your confidence into an upword spiral. Writers are people who share their thoughts, diary writing, journals are fine, but they aren’t the stuff of be a writer.

Q: Do you have a favorite quote, quip, or saying? What is it?

A: Yes, I have two that guide me all the time and I paraphrase them both here: Matthew Fox, “The environmental crisis is a crisis of the soul.” and Jim Harrison, who writes, “It only gradually occured to me that it’s not people’s problems that interst me, but their solutions to their problems that interest me”

Q: What do you find most rewarding about writing?

A: I enjoy the rapture of the creative process in action. When you are striking what you feel are golden ideas while working on a book it is unlike anything else.

Q: What’s your 5 word memoir?

A: Creatively devising modern environmental myths.

Steve Semken began the Ice Cube Press in 1993 and now bases his business in North Liberty, Iowa. He was one of Radish Magazine’s Top Ten People award winners for 2009. A publisher of well over 50 books, he has focused primarily on place-based writing as a way to better understand how to best live where we do, whether through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual arts, or memoir. He is also the author of six books, including The Great Blues (Woodley Press) on great blue herons, which won the Kansas Book Award and Pick Up Stick City (Rivers Bend Press) a novella which Publishers’ Weekly called “funny, poignant and more than a bit whimsical,” adding that “this allegorical tale of small town and environmental care is suffused with wonder.” He was also a writer-in -residence at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.

source: http://www.owfi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=48&Itemid=254

Jeanette . . . → Read More: Ice Cube Press author at Akron pRhyme Time on The Prairie]]> The Akron Public Library in Akron, Iowa, will be hosting its 5th annual pRhyme Time on the Prairie, Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13. They have invited three guest poets for this year’s event. Sioux City poet and author, Jeanette Hopkins is one, the others are Patrick Hicks and Marci Broyhill.

Jeanette has traveled extensively throughout the Midwest, Texas, New York, and New Jersey sharing her stories and love of literacy with children in public and private elementary schools. In the last 4 years she and her husband and fellow author, Bruce Hopkins, have been in nearly 200 schools and worked with thousands of schoolchildren. Jeanette was recently a featured author at the Iowa City City of Literature’s “One Book, Two Book” Festival, an event sponsored by UNESCO, Pearson Publishing Company, and the City of Literature. Jeanette will also be presenting at the Hudson Children’s Book Festival in Hudson, New York this May. Jeanette has had two childrens’ books published. Most recently, The Juggler, which was an award-winning book with the Midwest Independent Publishers’ Assocation in 2012. Her first book was The LadyBug Waltz.

http://www.jeanettehopkins.com/

http://www.akron.lib.ia.us/use-the-library/programs/poetry

on line at: http://edibleomaha.com/winter-2013/straight-from-the-farmers-mouth-farmscape-brings-compelling-new-voices-to-our-agricultural-discourse/

By Matt Low

What would the conversation sound like if an organic farmer, a large-scale mono-crop farmer, a hog confinement operator, a slaughterhouse worker, a local winery owner and a failed family farmer were . . . → Read More: Edible Omaha Farmscape Review!]]>

Straight from the Farmer’s Mouth: Farmscape Brings Compelling New Voices to our Agricultural Discourse

on line at: http://edibleomaha.com/winter-2013/straight-from-the-farmers-mouth-farmscape-brings-compelling-new-voices-to-our-agricultural-discourse/

By Matt Low

What would the conversation sound like if an organic farmer, a large-scale mono-crop farmer, a hog confinement operator, a slaughterhouse worker, a local winery owner and a failed family farmer were put in the same room and asked about the state of modern-day American agriculture? That is the hypothetical question posed in Farmscape: The Changing Rural Environment  (Ice Cube Press 2012), the new book compiled by Iowa’s poet laureate Mary Swander.

One of the major strengths of Farmscape’s  compact 150 pages is its unconventionality. The book itself is split into two major sections: The first section is comprised of a reader’s theatre play script that Swander has been staging in communities throughout the Midwest; the second section features a dozen essays by different authors, a few of whom recount live performances of the play. The rest lend unique, firsthand accounts of agricultural practices. Through formatting the book in this way—making the most of both the play and the essays—Swander maximizes the number of different perspectives on the topics of food production and consumption, above all else bringing a breath of fresh air to what has become a fairly stagnate debate.

The Midwest’s food systems have long been a component of Swander’s writing, perhaps most prominently in her memoir Out of This World  (1995). The memoir details her efforts to grow most of her own food herself—necessitated by life-threatening allergies to processed foods— alongside the Amish community that resides near Kalona, Iowa.

In putting together the different pieces that comprise Farmscape,  Swander broadens her scope to include everything from gardening to row-crop farming, all the while upholding the dignity of those who have made farming their vocation.

The centerpiece of Farmscape’s  first section is a reader’s theatre play script completed by Swander and students enrolled in a creative writing course at Iowa State University in the fall of 2007. Using interviews with individuals involved with food production at virtually every level—including those occupations noted above—the play interweaves the immensely varied experiences and opinions of nearly 20 characters, all of whom have staked out livelihoods and legacies in the realm of Midwestern agriculture.

As a result, the script reads like a checklist of controversial issues related to growing, harvesting and processing food. Lonna and Joe, for example, run a small organic farming operation that   they view as an extension of land stewardship as much as a way to make a living. Randy and Kristi, on the other hand, run a contract hog confinement operation mainly because, as Kristi states, they are “doing whatever it is we can to hold on.”

Then there’s Jon, who started working in a slaughterhouse right out of high school. It doesn’t take long to realize that Jon hates every minute of his work, which prompts the one disclaimer for the book (some adult language is used). But Jon cannot imagine finding a way out, and his perspective is therefore perhaps the toughest to read. Overall, the play’s disparate voices fit together seamlessly and make for compelling reading, particularly for those new to the format of reader’s theatre.

Swander’s essay “How Farmscape Happened” is the first piece of the book’s second section. In this essay she gives significant background information for many of the play’s details, including how her class went about collecting interviews for the script’s dialogue, the work that goes into casting the play in each new location as it travels the Midwest and the (mostly) positive response the play has received.

What is most interesting about the details in the essay is the vivid portrayal of the many people living in both rural and urban locales throughout the Midwest who are looking for a venue to express gratitude, vent frustrations or share innovations concerning smalland large-scale agriculture. Swander’s essay also reflects upon the idea that, although staging a performance of the play may require significant planning and preparation, ultimately doing so is an achievable goal and is absolutely worthwhile. She concludes “How Farmscape Happened” with an outreach to individuals and communities interested in staging their own productions of the play.

The other 11 essays that follow Swander’s piece cover everything from specific aspects of the play’s performance to substantive commentary on the agricultural issues and controversies presented. The latter tend to be the most interesting, as they are written by individuals who have extensive experience in food production, land stewardship and farm advocacy.

Claudia Prado-Meza’s contribution, for example, gives background on the growing role of the Latino community in American agriculture. She says this community is strong in the fields, in the slaughterhouses and even—as featured in the play—as small business owners of restaurants, grocery stores or bed-and-breakfasts.

In Leigh Adcock’s essay, “Where Are Women’s Voices in Agriculture?” she interrogates the general lack of women’s perspectives and concerns in the historical discourse of American farming largely because, as she notes, “They refused to participate in the corporate industrial system that currently dominates U.S. food and farming.”

Finally, Francis Thicke details his work as a small-scale sustainable dairy farmer. He highlights the practices he employs to ensure that he produces a high-quality product, while still preserving the integrity of the land upon which every aspect of his dairy operation relies.

Combined with the realistic portrayals in the play itself, the work as a whole gives the reader an opportunity, as Swander herself asserts, “to learn from [the] struggles and resilience” of this comprehensive profile of farmers and laborers.

If you’ve picked up a copy of this publication, you have shown a willingness to embrace at least part of its motto, which is to “Eat. Drink. Read. Think.” At the risk of sounding like a shameless plug, what makes Edible Omaha  (and all of the Edible Communities publications) so essential in this day and age is its unique perspective on agriculture;  that is, publications of this sort openly embrace the cultural component of food production and consumption. This involves celebrating the successes and commiserating over the failures, as well as expressing shared concern over safety, health and ethical practices.

Farmscape  participates in the exact same discourse, a discourse that has a long history of participation by America’s greatest environmental and agricultural thinkers, writers and philosophers, from Thomas Jefferson to Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and Wendell Berry. Readers of these and similar authors will surely find Farmscape  to be an equally compelling read, with the added caveat that most of the voices conveyed stem not from philosophical or academic backgrounds, but from on-the-ground experiences and (often hard) lives lived in the fields.

Matt Low has a PhD in English from the University of Iowa. His research and writing interests focus mostly on the American Midwest, including the inseparable issues of sustainable  sustainable agriculture and prairie restoration. Matt lives and teaches in Omaha.

Tall Corn Book Talk, Winter, 2013 with Robert Sessions