August 17, 2013
On Saturday, August 17 at 6:30 pm Bone Creek hosted an Art and Poetry event in Marvin Gardens. Featured poets included JV Brummels, Leo Kovar, Marge Saiser, Barbara Schmitz and Dwaine Spieker.
JV Brummels fifth collection, City at War, was published by The Backwaters Press in late 2009. His work has been recognized with a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elkhorn Prize and the Mildred Bennett Award for contributions to the state’s literature from the Nebraska Center for the Book. His Book of Grass was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. Raised first on a farm and later on a ranch, he was educated at the University of Nebraska and later Syracuse University. In 1984 he began a horseback cattle outfit to raise natural, grass-fed beef, which he still operates.
Leo Kovar returned to his roots in Brainard, NE where he grew up on a family farm. Kovar has lived in various locations in the United States but chose to return home for his retirement. As a family farmer, the land owns you as well as you owning the land. Because of this, agrarians have a special sense of place and home. Leo feels that the agrarian sense of place learned in his formative years is responsible for his community involvement and citizenship in each of the places that he has lived during the course of his life. Kovar’s poetry reflects on his strong sense of place.
Marjorie Saiser was named Distinguished Artist in Poetry in 2009 by the Nebraska Arts Council. This award includes publication of a new book of poetry by the Backwaters Press, Omaha, in 2010. Saiser received her MA in creative writing at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, winning the Vreelands Award and the Academy of American Poets competition. Her work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, Zone 3, CrazyHorse, Crab Orchard Review, Smartish Pace, and Cream City Review.
Barbara Schmitz was awarded Emeritus Status from Northeast College of Norfolk in 2010 where she taught writing and literature and initiated and coordinated the Visiting Writers Series. Her poem Uniforms appeared in Ted Kooser’s world-wide newspaper column American Life in Poetry.
Dwaine Spieker teaches British Literature, Composition, and Creative Writing at Wayne High School in Wayne, NE. After growing up on a farm outside Elgin, NE, at the eastern edge of the sandhills, he attended the University of Nebraska at Kearney, graduating in 1997. In 2001, he received his Master of Arts in English from the University of Nebraska –Lincoln. More recently he has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. These grants are part of the NEH’s Summer Seminars for Schoolteachers program. Spieker’s poetry has appeared in Plainsongs, The Nebraska Poets Calendar, The Plain Song Review, The Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska Life, and Prairie Schooner. His first chapbook, Garden of Stars, published by All Along Press in St Louis, MO, won the 2010 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry.
During the evening Bone Creek Museum continued its year-long celebration of its 5th with birthday cake and beverages.