Larry Woiwode, North Dakota
Larry Woiwode is the author of eight novels. The two most widely acclaimed
are his first, What I'm Going To Do, I Think (1969), and Beyond
the Bedroom Wall (1975). His stories and poetry have appeared in The
New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, Harper's and
The Paris Review. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a John Dos Passos
Prize winner, a recipient of awards from the William Faulkner Foundation
and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a nominee
for both the National Book Critics Circle and National Book Awards. A
North Dakota native, he returned in 1978 and now lives on a 160-acre farm
near Mott where he continues to write.
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A poet laureate should not be a mere figurehead or adornment, but called upon to add dimension to the daily grind of partisan politics; a laureate might read, for instance, at the convening of a legislative session, besides serving daily as a good citizen.
Most poets are rooted in the natural world, spokespersons for the inarticulate
in nature, as well as the wordless
desires of the common person—or poets should be searching for words
for
those sides of the world. And most poets are committed politically, in
one way or another, able to present their views in a memorable matrix
of words; they can, in this function of their office, serve as a governing
conscience of a gone-soft state.
–Larry Woiwode
© 2003 Poetry & Politics. All Rights Reserved.
