Saturday, November 18, 2000

Judith Minty

Judith recently returned to her home in Michigan after a year as Visiting Professor/Poet in Residence for the creative writing program at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. She has taught in or been the visiting poet for the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the University of California at Santa Cruz, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Syracuse University, even at the Muskegon Correction Facility in Michigan. Judith was also director of the Creative Writing program at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California for 12 years.

Her first book, Lake Songs And Other Fears, was recipient of the US Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1974. Her other full-length books are Yellow Dog Journal, In The Presence Of Mothers, and Dancing The Fault. Her chapbooks are Letters To My Daughters, Counting The Losses and The Mad Painter Poems. Judith’s poetry, essays and short stories have been published in numerous magazines and in over fifty anthologies.

In July, renowned poet Diane Wakoski suggested that Judith Minty be nominated Michigan state poet laureate instead of songwriter Bob Seger since Seger has never been considered a poet. Wakoski wrote: "Judith represents the state in a wonderful way. She’s a woman, which would be nice, a native Michigander, she is in love with the wilderness, and has a whole series of poems… about the Yellow Dog River in the Upper Peninsula."

Michael T. Young


Nothing escapes Michael Young's notice, from the cosmic to the microscopic, and in the best of these challenging, sometimes difficult poems, that notice is transformed into images so arresting and beautiful that they stop the heart for a moment and enter into the reader's memory for good
From a review written by Rhina P. Espaillat

That is high praise indeed for a poet’s first full-length poetry collection. Transcriptions of Daylight was published in September by Rattapallax Press.

Michael was born in Reading Pennsylvania but moved to New York City in 1990 to write. He lived there for nine years, during which time he attended New York University, Hunter College and various writer’s conferences. His work has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, Rattapallax, Pivot, The Hollins Critic, Folio, and other literary journals. His chapbook, Because the Wind Has Questions, was published in 1997.

Michael resides in New Jersey and earns his living as a computer programmer.

As Michael wrote:
Poetry encourages paying attention to thought. It provokes us to question.


rattapallax@yahoo.com