Professor edits book of S.D. poetry

English professor and Writer-in-Residence Patrick Hicks has teamed up with the Center for Western Studies to produce a new anthology, entitled A Harvest of Words, that features the poetry of South Dakota.

This is the first time that an anthology containing solely South Dakotan poets has been published.

The idea for it came to Hicks one day over his morning coffee.

"It occured to me that no one has done a collection like this," Hicks said. "And then I thought ‘I should do that.'"

Hicks invited poets from across the state to submit examples of their work. They had to submit 30 pages of work that included at least one poem about South Dakota and one original poem.

"It's something that was long overdue," Hicks said. "A book like this is important to the literary landscape of any state."

Hicks' criteria for selecting poets included having recently published a book with either a university or national press and they must have been published in credible literary journals.

The final result was an anthology featuring the best of the 14 selected poets, including South Dakota Poet Laureate David Allan Evans.

"The writers, all of whom know South Dakota well, can't help but write about things near at hand and yet their range and scope are not bound by the state's physical dimensions," Evans said in a statement about the anthology.

While not all the poems are explicitly about South Dakota, they all reflect the artistic environment found here, something that was important to Hicks.

"It's important to gather together so we can understand what we are interested in," Hicks said. "[The book] is a snapshot of what artists are interested in."

Hicks is a native Minnesotan and holds a dual citizenship with Ireland, but feels that he is still very much a South Dakota writer.

"I've lived here for eight years, so I don't feel inhibited calling myself a South Dakota poet," he said. "Sometimes it takes an outsider to see things differently."

Hicks has published five volumes of poetry, his most recent being This London, inspired by the titular city.

"My imagination often gets tugged toward Ireland and my native Minnesota as well as South Dakota," Hicks said.

The anthology is being published exclusively by the Center for Western Studies in honor of Herbert Krause (1905-1976). Krause was the founder of the Center of Western Studies and Augustana's first Writer-in-Residence.

Executive Director for the Center for Western Studies Harry Thompson described the collection as "a volume that will define the poetic arts in South Dakota for decades."

The book will premier during the South Dakota Festival of Books. As part this, Hicks and several of the authors will be doing readings of their work this Saturday in the Orpheum Theater in downtown Sioux Falls at 11 a.m.