Poetry Night with Susan Jaret McKinstry and Leslie Schultz

Tumblehome is structured like a musical fugue, moving in three sections from the west coast of Ireland to London, then to Galway, and back to a small town in Minnesota as it interweaves and deepens themes of home, time and loss. The poems contemplate vast human history and the small space of our lives in distinct voices and episodes, with closely-observed objects – coins, stones, birds, water – reappearing and echoing to create a harmonic poetic travelogue.

Susan Jaret McKinstry, professor of 19th c British literature, narrative theory, journalism, and creative writing at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, has published poems in Plain Songs I & II, The Journal of General Internal Medicine, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Willows Wept Review, Rootstalk, and the Red Wing Poet Artist Collaboration (2020, 2023). Her first chapbook, Tumblehome, came out in fall 2024. Susan yearns for the sea, and has been lucky to teach and write in Ireland, Scotland, Norway, London, Florence, and Moscow.

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Named for a bold pink pigment that fades over time, Leslie Schultz’s vibrant collection Geranium Lake is an ekphrastic extravaganza as well as a meditation on age, time, and beauty. Schultz’s refreshing curiosity is evident as she engages with individual works of art and with larger issues of looking, curation, and display. Schultz’s eye for quirky details and her ear for playful sounds reminds me of that other great ekphrastic poet, Marianne Moore. “I know the struggle to make one / thing true,” reminding us that making art—and making a life—is a long process with endless twists and turns: “for each new page, dozens crumpled and torn.” For Schultz, the process is the point. Geranium Lake teaches us what it means to live a life devoted to apprehending, and making, beauty. This is one collection that won’t lose its luster no matter how much time passes. —Melissa Range, author of Horse and Rider and Scriptorium

Leslie Schultz (Northfield, Minnesota; winonamedia.net) has five collections of poetry; of these, Geranium Lake: Poems on Art and Art-Making (Kelsay Books) is her most recent. Her poetry has appeared widely, in such journals as Poet Lore, Mezzo Cammin, Midwest Quarterly, Naugatuck River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pensive, MockingHeart Review. and Blue Unicorn. She serves as a judge for the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. In addition to poems, she publishes photographs, essays, and fiction; makes quilts and soups; and happily mucks about in a garden plagued by shade, rabbits, and walnut trees.

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