Poet Athena Kildegaard to Speak at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum

Friday | April 14 | 12-1 pm
Minnesota Marine Art Museum | 800 Riverview Dr.
minnesotamarineart.org

On April 14th, from noon to 1 PM, the poet Athena Kildegaard will visit Winona’s Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM) to read from her work and discuss how her latest book, Prairie Midden, engages with the history and ecology of the Minnesota prairie. Kildegaard’s presentation will enter into dialogue with the MMAM’s current exhibition of works by artist Ian Hanesworth, Fragments of this Living Earth, which spans disciplines of printmaking, textiles, and poetry, and asserts the critical interconnectedness of human and ecological wellbeing. Thanks to a special grant from First Tuesday: The Laureate Writer’s Series and from the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, admission to this noon event is free.  

Kildegaard’s latest book, Prairie Midden, grew out of research she did with primary sources such as school year books, diaries, letters written in response to government queries, county records and more, combined with research into the history of prairie settlement, the prairie ecosystem, and changes to agriculture. Some of the poems imagine the voices of 16- or 17-year old daughters from 1836 to 2036. Others question the way in which we understand an ecosystem that is mostly disappeared. Still others sing out to that ecosystem and the variety of flora and fauna that lived there. Tess Taylor, poetry reviewer for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” says about Prairie Midden: “Part excavation, part elegy, this book enacts tenderness and calls for the recovery of a history and an ecosystem at once.”  

This same concern with history and the relationship between human culture and the ecosystem is seen in Ian Hanesworth’s art.  The MMAM exhibition Fragments of this Living Earth includes a body of work that engages concepts of ecological entanglement and more-than-human kinship through a focus on herbal medicine, a discipline which considers the well-being of our bodies in a way that is directly tied to the greater ecological community, along with a new series of original prints from MMAM’s 6.8 acre riverside that celebrate the indelible imprint the Driftless landscape has made on Hanesworth’s artistic practice.

Athena Kildegaard writes poetry, libretti, essays, and stories. She is also the co-editor of Rocked by the Waters, an anthology of poems about motherhood. Her poems have appeared widely in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, North American Review and elsewhere. Her poems have been set to music by many composers, including Libby Larsen, Linda Kachelmeier, Mina Esary, Frank Horvat, and others. Athena’s poems have also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and read on the radio, and they have served as inspiration for painters and dancers. She lives in western Minnesota where she teaches at the University of Minnesota Morris and directs the honors program. More information is available at www.athenakildegaard.com.

This event is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Image at top: Book cover of Prairie Midden by Athena Kildegaard.

The Minnesota Marine Art Museum is a member of the River Arts Alliance. To learn more about the benefits of membership, please visit: riverartsalliance.org/membership/. River Arts Alliance serves as fiscal sponsor of the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.