Poetry
Enjoy an array of locally written poetry
North Dakota's Honored Poets
North Dakota’s Poets Laureate
Larry Woiwode (1995–present)
Lydia Jackson (1975-1982)
Henry Martinson (1973-1974)
Corbin Waldron (1957-1972)
James W. Foley, Jr. (1874 -1939)
unofficial poet laureate
North Dakota Centennial Poet, 1989 David Solheim
Janzen, Rhoda
Julius, Kristjan Niels (1860-1936)
Born in Iceland, K. N. Julius emigrated to North America in 1878 and moved to Thingvalla Township, in northeastern North Dakota about 1894. He wrote satirical light-verse, often describing the immigrant’s plight in understanding English and was well known in both Iceland and the United States. A monument to Julius near the destroyed Thingvalla Church near Mountain, North Dakota, still survives.
Lowman, Bill
Riders of the Leafy Spurge (1985)
The Blueberry Road (1986)
Walk a Mile in My Bones (1988)
Lyons, Richard E.
Poetry North: Five Poets of North Dakota (1970, editor)
Racer and Lame (1975, editor)
Scanning the Land (1980, editor)
Stackers of Wheat (1951, co-authored with Prudence Sand)
Men and Tin Kettles (1956)
One Squeaking Straw (1958)
Paintings in Taxicabs (1965)
Above Time (1968)
Everything’s a Verb (New Rivers Press, 1995)
From Sweetness (Pearl Editions, 2001)
Martinson, David Keith
Bleeding the Radiator (1974)
Martinson, Henry
Old Trails . . . and New (1958)
Funny Stories in Verse (n.d.)
Marzolf, Arnold H.
Faith Amid Despair in Poetry and Prayer (1966)
Prairie Poems: Poetic Dreams of Prairie Themes (1974)
Masters, Janelle
Nelson, Rodney
Good Clean Fun (1989)
Norstog, Jon
Yggdrasil (Christiania) (1902, in Nowegian)
Piehl, Shadd
His work appears in Towards Horses: Poems (Aluminum Canoe, 1999)
Ratchenski, Carol Kapaun
A Beautiful Hell (New Rivers Press, 2016)
A Certain Kind of Forgiveness (Meadowlark, 2019)
Solheim, David
On the Ward (1975)
Inheritance (1987)
West River: 100 Poems (1989)
Beard, Michael, translator
Professor of English at the University of North Dakota, Beard is also a translator of Middle Eastern poetry and co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures incorporating Edebiyât and the book Walking with the Wind by Abbas Kiarostami (translated from Persian and co-edited with Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, 2002).
Beede, Aaron McGaffey
Toward the Sun (1916)
Self Sloughed-Off Person Free (1934)
Bjarnason, Paul (Icelandic translator and poet)
Odes and Echoes (1954)
More Echoes (1963)
Fleygar (1953, in Icelandic)
Flisar (1964, in Icelandic)
Bliss, Paul Southworth
Spin Dance and Spring Comes to Shaw's Garden (Lakeside, 1934)
Cirrus from the West, with wood engravings by Harold J. Mathews (Lakeside Press, 1935)
The Rye is The Sea: A Book of Poems. Together with a prose account of the author’s experiences as a novice hunter and angler entitled: Hunting Begins At Forty and Fishing At Forty (The Cirrus Company, 1936).
Poems of Places (The Cirrus Company, 1937).
Borner, Florence
Modern Poems for Modern People (1919)
Camrud, Madelyn
A Greener Green, A Bluer Blue (1983)
This House is Filled with Cracks (1994)
The Light We Go After (Dacotah Territory Press)
Crow, Barbara
Coming Up for Light and Air (New Rivers Press, 1995)
Czerwiec, Heidi
Hiking the Maze (Finishing Line Press, 2009)
Dreps, Hildegarde Fried
Oars in Silver Water and Other Poems (1961)
Duggan, F. J., M.D.
Infinity or Nature’s God (1909)
Foley, James W., Jr.
A Little Book of Prairie Breezes (1902)
Two Outdoor Plays (1925)
Songs of Schooldays (1909)
Songs with Silver Linings (1910)
Boys and Girls, Plains and Prairie, Life and Laughter (1911)
The Verses of James W. Foley: Book of Life and Laughter (1911)
Old Friends like You (1914)
The Mellow Year (1921)
Just for Fun Verses (1923)
With Happiness to You (1928)
Ford, Deborah
Brush strokes: Poems (Singular Speech Press, 1990)
A Kind of Heaven: Poems of Vietnam (34 poems)
Heffernan, Mrs. John
Poems of Home Life (1912)
Henry, Gordon, Jr.
His work appears in Traces in Blood, Bone and Stone:
Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry (2006), Songs from This Earth on Turtle's Back: Contemporary American Indian Poetry (1983) and Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First Native American Writers (1994).
Jacobson, Dale
Dakota Incantations (1973)
Poems for Goya’s “Disparates” (1980)
Shouting at Midnight (1986)
Blues for Tom McGrath (1991)
Factories and Cities: A Poem in Two Parts (2003)
A Walk by the River: A Long Poem (2004)
Exile in My Homeland (2005)
Jackson, Lydia
Selected Poems (1962)
Rhymes for Every Season (1943)
Pardon My Gaff (1965)
A Peace Garden of Verses (1967)
A Trilogy Trimmed in Lace (1984, posthumously)