Poetry and Fiddle Tunes

Speaker:

Paul Brooke and Ken Waldman

18 Feb 2008

1:00 PM

Pioneer Room, Memorial Union

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Paul Brooke will read and show slides from his latest book of poetry, Light and Matter: Photographs and Poems of Iowa. Brooke previously worked as a biologist and naturalist in Alaska, and his writings draw on environmental issues and scientific observation. Brooke is an ISU alum (M.A., English) and currently an associate professor of English and chair of the Humanities Division at Grand View College in Des Moines. Ken Waldman has drawn on his twenty years in Alaska to produce poems, stories and fiddle tunes that combine into a performance uniquely his own. A former college professor, Waldman has had more than 400 poems and stories published in national journals and has worked full time since 1994 as Alaska's Fiddling Poet, performing at some of the nation's leading universities, festivals, arts centers, and clubs. Part of the 4th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

This lecture was made possible in part by the generosity of F. Wendell Miller, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Mr. Miller, who died in 1995 at age 97, was born in Altoona, Illinois, grew up in Rockwell City, graduated from Grinnell College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Des Moines and Chicago before returning to Rockwell City to manage his family's farm holdings and to practice law. His will helped to establish the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings on which, in part, helped to support this activity.