MOUNT VERNON — Iowa poet Mary Swander, whose books include “Driving the Body Back” and “Heaven-and-Earth House,” will give a free public reading Thursday, Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. in Shaw Lounge of The Commons at Cornell College.
Swander is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches literature at Iowa State University. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker and Poetry. She adapted “Driving the Body Back” to the stage and it has been produced, along with her co-authored musical, “Dear Iowa” (with composer Christopher Frank), across the Midwest and for Iowa Public Television.
Other books include an edited collection of garden literature, “Bloom and Blossom: A Reader’s Guide to Gardening”; a memoir, “Out of This World: A Woman’s Life Among the Amish”; and a book of non-fiction, “Parsnips in the Snow,” named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 1990.
“Swander writes with zealous music of Midwestern rural encounters,” says Publishers Weekly. “Her writing is more accessible than poetry is sometimes believed to be, yet sacrifices nothing by opening a pathway with ‘common’ language; the rhythms of weather, humor and talk body forth with an engaging confidence and candor.”
Swander has won numerous awards, including a Whiting Award, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Chicago Public Library, the Nation-Discovery Award, an NEA grant for the Literary Arts and two Ingram Merrill Awards. The Garden Writers Association of America awarded Swander its Quill and Trowel Award for best magazine writing of 1993.