Document text
SUNNY Temp: 69 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Sunday, June 8, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend May 22, 2003 Prize-winning poet Ginger Andrews will read By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune If you’re a poet, you either teach or you find another way to support yourself. Ginger Andrews’ way has not been an easy one. "I don’t know another poet who’s a cleaning lady," she says in a telephone interview. Andrews, 47, of North Bend, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize for new poets in 1999, has had poems published in The Hudson Review and is having her work included on a prestigious, new poetry CD. At 7 p.m. today, she joins poet Robert McDowell in a reading and reception at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Medford. McDowell, of Talent, runs Story Line Press, a small literary publishing house. Advertisement Andrews and McDowell met about a decade ago at the Coos Bay Writers Conference on the Oregon Coast. Andrews had flirted with poetry for most of her life. In the middle 1990s, she was living in North Bend, where she worked as a church janitor and cleaned houses, when she saw that the workshop was coming to nearby Coos Bay. She almost didn’t go. "I thought it was more than I could afford," she says. With the help of a friend who encouraged her to go, she arranged to do some cleaning at the conference to pay her tuition. She wound up picking McDowell as an instructor. McDowell was a Southern California native who had been educated at Columbia and published three books of poetry, "Quiet Money," "The Diviners" and "On Foot, In Flames." He was a critic and translator and the author of several poetry texts and had taught poetry in several colleges and was moving to Southern Oregon. "It was extraordinary to encounter somebody like that in a workshop — or anywhere," McDowell says. "It reminded me of hearing Raymond Carver read things for the first time in Santa Cruz years earlier. I had the same feeling." McDowell encouraged Andrews to enter Story Line’s First Book Competition. She won the first prize of $1,000. In a foreword to "An Honest Answer" (available at www.Amazon.com ), Andrews’ book, poet Mark Jarman of Vanderbilt University compared Andrews’ writing to the work of Carver or Robert Frost or William Carlos Williams. "I would venture to say that the poetry of Ginger Andrews is as close to the tradition of Williams as American free verse has ever been," Jarman wrote. Others have noticed. Garrison Keillor has read from Andrews’ first book a record 11 times on "A Prairie Home Companion." Andrews writes about working-class people, tough lives, alcoholism, dysfunctional families, faith. "I’ve been told what stands out most is love," she says. "My family inspires me. My sisters and I like each other." Andrews grew up in a home with five brothers and sisters but few books. Her Arkansas sharecropper father had moved to Oregon to work in the sawmills. Her mother died when Andrews was 10, prompting her first stumbling efforts at a poem. "I was feeling sorry for myself," she says. "It wasn’t very good, but it made me feel better." She dropped out of high school and was married at 16 and pregnant immediately. She and her husband moved to Roseburg, where she "put poetry on the back burner," although she remembers being moved by some of Carl Sandburg’s poems in a Roseburg book store in 1974. Divorced after 13 years of marriage, she moved back to North Bend with her two sons and took whatever work she could find. She waitressed and gave out samples of free sausages to shoppers in grocery stores. In 1976 she sent a poem to The Writer, a Boston-based magazine, that was accepted for publication. "I had no idea what an honor it was," she says. The Coos Bay workshops came along, and McDowell, and a trip to New York City for a book launch, meetings with The Hudson Review people, who are including her work on "Along These Lines," a new CD celebrating 55 years of Hudson Review poetry. "I get nervous," she says. "But I survived." Andrews’ poetry, like McDowell’s, is sometimes seen as a sign that modern poetry, or at least a strand of it, is leaving the ivory towers. "She’s an American original," McDowell says. He likens her to Emily Dickinson as a maverick spirit running counter to expectations. "One of the things poetry does is build communities," he says. "It does not have to be obscure." Andrews seems to take a matter-of-fact view of her life and work. "When you’ve had a lot of education and you come into your voice as a writer, there may be things you try to un-learn to be accessible," she says. "I didn’t have anything to unlearn. My only skills are life skills." She says she’s thought about writing about the natural beauty of the Oregon Coast but cannot seem to do so. "I’m a people poet. I listen to what people say," she says. "I have a short memory. But they’ll say something, and it hits me, and I just remember it like it’s right there." Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Rogue Valley Auto Finder Rogue Valley Job Finder --> Rogue Valley Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Real Estate Showcase Food for Thought Hike of the Week Wellness Connection Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Openings Prime Times