Book That Poet - Shoshauna Shy

BIO: Shoshauna Shy is a member of the Prairie Fire Poetry Quartet which includes John Lehman, Richard Roe, and Robin Chapman. They are available to perform at museum celebrations, art gallery openings, special events and evening soirées. In May 2004, she founded the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program: its mission is to place poetry in public places where it is not expected. Most recent project involves partnerships with Cowfeather Press and Madison B-Cycle. Read up on these at poetryjumpsofftheshelf.com

Shoshauna also initiated the Woodrow Hall Jumpstart Award for other Wisconsin poets who want to implement programs where poetry is brought to the public in unconventional ways. Read up on this at the website as well.

Shoshauna Shy's poems have been published in numerous journals and magazines which include The Los Angeles Review, The Seattle Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Rattle, Rosebud, and Poetry Northwest. She won First Place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Triad Contest in 2002; three of her poems were finalists in the Wisconsin Academy Review Poetry Contest in 2004 and the Wisconsin People & Ideas contest in 2010, and one of her poems was selected for the Poetry 180 Library of Congress program launched by Billy Collins. She was the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets' poetry editor for their quarterly Museletter from 2001–2004, and sponsored a contest in Free Verse in 2005. Her collection What the Postcard Didn’t Say won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association in 2008, and her mixed-media assemblage incorporating a poem titled “Saturday Night in Cheyenne” took second place Best of Show at the International Society of Human Ethology conference on the University of Wisconsin campus in 2010. Shoshauna works for the Wisconsin Humanities Council, and helped create, coordinate and facilitate poetry programs for the annual Wisconsin Book Festival in downtown Madison from 2002 to 2011.

Long Story Short has posted an interview with Shoshauna by Russell Bittner.

PUBLICATIONS:
What the Postcard Didn't Say (Zelda Wilde Publishing, 2007), full-length collection - $11.95
White Horses on Sale for a Song (Parallel Press, 2005) - $10.00
Slide Into Light: Poems of the Brighter Moments (Moon Journal Press, 2001) - $8.00
Souped-Up on the Must-Drive Syndrome (Pudding House Publications, 2000) - $8.95

souped-up on the must-drive syndrome cover

Lake Wingra Morning: Poems of the Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood (Woodrow Hall Editions in partnership with the Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood Association, 2003) - $5.00. Edited by Shoshauna Shy - SOLD OUT

Shoshauna Shy's poems have been anthologized by Random House (Poetry 180), Grayson Books (Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge, To Love One Another), Wisconsin Poets' Calendars, Samsara Quarterly, Pudding House Publications (The Pocket Poet Parenting Guide, Hunger Enough), Marion Street Press (Poem, Revised), Midmarch Arts Press (Mirror, Mirror: Reflections on the Way We Look ), Wild Dove Studio & Press (Jane's Stories), Sourcebooks, Inc. (Poetry Daily), Girlchild Press (Just Like a Girl), Paper Kite Press (Poem, Home), Red Hen Press (Letters to the World), and Dos Gatos Press (Wingbeats).

OTHER POEMS:
loc.gov/poetry/180/068.html
poemeleon.org/shoshauna-shy/
madpoetry.org/madpoets/shyshosh.html

POEMS

THE BEST WAY TO READ LORINE NIEDECKER'S POEMS

First wander through Emerald Grove's antique store
amongst fishing nets and rusty kerosene lamps
for a spitbox in which to plant Queen Anne's lace.

Unpin dishtowels from a clothesline
and notice how the leaves
of the neighboring poplar
shimmy in the wind.

Enter a cabin that has been sitting empty
while its owners take a cross-country train
to New York.

With her book on your lap, cup the chin
of a cat as it sprawls beside you
on a windowsill, the breeze thick
with the scent of cherry blossoms.

Remember how your husband's former fiancée
whose pregnancy was terminated
asked to come visit, couldn't take her eyes
off your little boy.

—Shoshauna Shy

Published by Wisconsin Academy Review