BIO: Wendy Vardaman, has a Ph.D. in English from University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Engineering from Cornell University. Co-editor of Verse Wisconsin, her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals, including Poetry Daily, Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes, Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, Letters to the World, Poet Lore, qarrtsiluni, Mezzo Cammin, Nerve Cowboy, Free Verse, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Women’s Review of Books, Rain Taxi Review, Rattle and Portland Review. The author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press, 2009), she has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and was runner-up in 2004 for the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker Award. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with husband, Thomas DuBois, has three children, and works for the children’s theater company, The Young Shakespeare Players.

PUBLICATIONS:
Obstructed View (Fireweed Press, 2009) - $12.00

WORK ONLINE:

Poetry on qarrtsiluni: qarrtsiluni.com/tag/wendy-vardaman/
Poetry on Fiera Lingua Poet's Corner: fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=2889
Interview with Iranian poet, Farrideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi: eclectica.org/v13n1/vardaman.html
Review of Modern Life by Matthea Harvey: raintaxi.com/online/2008summer/harvey.shtml
Review-Essay, "Poems Including History and More," Women's Review of Books: wcwonline.org/content/view/1667/38/

POEMS
CRACKS

In the week that winter
yields to spring, the last snow seeps
into the saggy-doored garage, between wide foundation gaps,
through unevenly settled concrete plates, mixing there
with leaves left by late November:
fall sediment that dries, shrinks, then swells and steeps
as thaw replaces freeze, requiring lapsed
rituals of broom and rake, soap and wipe. I clear
a path to reach my sleeping bike;
extract a stack of dingy plastic chairs, once white;
excavate the dog’s ripe backyard waste,
look for crocus, daffodil, lilac
that shoot up and open in a blink; debate whether we ought
to risk geraniums yet; watch for signs of the buried-last-fall cat, heaved back.

—Wendy Vardaman