 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be too offended by that. But we cover anything that may be of interest to librarians. The show is free and open to anyone to watch, both our live show here on Wednesday mornings or our recordings, which are all available on our website if you're not able to join us here on Wednesdays. We'd go live on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Central Time. And then all of our recordings going back to the very first one, which is in January 2009, are all available on our website for you to watch if you want to. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, interviews, book reviews, mini-training sessions. Basically anything that would be of interest to librarians, we're happy to have it on the show. And we do have commission, Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on and do presentations. And we do have guest speakers sometimes. And today we have a mixture of that. We have next to me here, to my left, is Mary Jo Ryan, who's here from the Nebraska Library Commission. And across from me is Rod Wagner, also from the Library Commission. And then in the middle is our guest for this morning, Tyler Hansen, who is our new state poet, new as of last year really, so not brand new, but November. And we're going to be chatting with her this morning about the whole program and how it's all going and how libraries can get involved. So I'm going to hand over to you guys to take over. And thank you, Krista. Well, to start things off, it's a very special honor for us to have Nebraska State Poet, Tyler Hansen with us today. Welcome. Thank you. Just a few preliminaries. It was on November 14 last year when Governor Heinemann announced, Tyler's appointment as Nebraska State Poet for a three-year term, excuse me, five-year term. I was looking at the three on 2013. Five-year term beginning at December 1, 2013. That announcement, I'm sure, was followed by a lot of activity on Twila's part to put into motion various activities as Nebraska State Poet. Another very special event came up in January, January 13, a very special event was held at the Capitol to introduce Twila. First Lady of Nebraska, Sally Gannon, introduced Twila on that day as the Nebraska State Poet. It was also an opportunity to congratulate, to welcome, to honor also the candidates who were also considered for the appointment. But as I recall, that was a very full room that afternoon. It was a lot of fun. Standing room only. Standing room only is absolutely right. It was great. And that's a pretty large room, so that was fun. I want to give some very special recognition to colleagues with the Nebraska Arts Council and Humanities Nebraska who provided some really great leadership in bringing the process together that led to Twila's appointment. And that happened many months ago and involved the Nebraska Arts Council, Humanities Nebraska and Nebraska Library Commission as three organizations working together with the governor's office to carry out a process that involved also the recruitment and appointment of a selection committee to consider nominations to meet with people who were selected as candidates for the appointment and so forth. So a big thank you to for some very great work on their part. Twila is the third, essentially, State Poet. John G. Nyhart was the Poet Laureate, appointed back in 1921, and he served in that capacity for many years. Later the process was changed and Governor Thone appointed Bill Clefcorn to serve as Nebraska State Poet. And he did so for many years until his death a few years ago. And following Mr. Clefcorn's death, there was a gap. We didn't have a State Poet for a while and then the process was launched that led to Twila's appointment. So that's where we are in brief. Well, Twila, maybe you could give us a few ideas about what's been happening since this all began and how this has been for you and some experiences you've had. Well, it's been, it's settling down a little bit now in May, but at the beginning there was just a flurry of activity, not social media, but media attention, radio, filming, interviews, calls for information and over the phone kind of things. And lots of, there was an article in the Lincoln Journal Star, for example. I was interviewed by the Omaha World Herald and my hometown newspaper, Lyons Mirror Sun. And so there just was a lot of media attention. The Elle Magazine from Journal Star, Nebraska Wesleyan Archways Magazine, and the latest is Nebraska Life Magazine did an article. So literally it's just been a flurry of activity there. That has settled down some. I've had lots of invitations to speak to groups, which is great. This is something I've been doing for a couple of decades now is giving workshops and readings through Humanities Nebraska. And I've recently added a program through the Nebraska Arts Council. So I have two programs essentially. One is a workshop and the other is a reading discussion. And those, we will show you the websites for those in a little bit. I've also, I've started a Facebook page for the State Poet. And you can find that by just typing in Twila Hansen, Nebraska State Poet, and you'll get it. It'll come up. I started that December 1st and I have well over 650 followers, which is awesome. And I try to post things that are relevant to writers, especially poets on there. During National Poetry Month, I featured poets who are going to be presenting at the book festival, for example, at the end of April. So that was a lot of fun and I still find websites or publications or events that people might be interested in. I've posted my schedule on there and so it's just, you can go there. I don't really have an active website. I do have a website through Humanities Nebraska, but really the social media is where I'm posting most of my stuff. So that's been happening and I have some plans for the future if you want to talk about that. I am hoping to get a website through the university. This is still in the works for access to Nebraska poets and Nebraska poetry. But I would have to work through them and this is all very preliminary, but the director is in favor of this. So that's a good sign. That's a great idea. So there's going to be some collaboration from a lot of people on this. But to do a real website in their mode will take a couple of years. So I'm hoping by like in three years from now we'll have an active website that people across the state or anyone really can access current and past Nebraska writers. We'll start with poetry, but it's in conjunction with the Nebraska State Poet kind of thing. That's great. And when you were talking about the programs, these are things that schools and libraries can apply to have you funded to come out and do a program in the school or in the library. That's right. I've gone to, I've for 20 years, over 20 years, I've done readings and workshops in schools, libraries and community groups all across the state. I mean, I've been, you know, from Shadroom down to Peru State College and everywhere in between all over the state. I've really have traveled the state already. And with all sorts of different age groups, elementary, secondary, adults. Absolutely. The schools, mostly it would be middle school, although a friend of mine, we went to Loomis Public Schools and we, in two days, we had every grade. Wow. In our class, we brought them in, in groups. It was a lot of fun. And it really shows that poetry speaks to every age. Right. And I did this with a fiction writer, Karen Shoemaker, my friend. So at that point, we were, we were able to get into more schools. That was exciting. Not so much all that recently, but libraries are a source that I really would like to tap into. Because in one case, I went to Lexington last two years ago, maybe, and they brought in a couple of high schools, Lexington and another school. So it was a high school workshop and the room was filled. We had like 50, 60 students in there. Wow. And I conducted a workshop there. How do those librarians, libraries, get in touch with you to ask you about some type of an event? Right. Well, on Humanities Nebraska, and I believe in Nebraska Arts Council, my home phone number is published. And so it's a public kind of thing. But they could also contact me through email. And the way it works is they have to contact me first with their event and make sure I'm available and willing to do it. It's not required. My only requirements are that I promote and encourage appreciation of poetry and literature in Nebraska. And also to encourage the emerging generation of writers. So going to the schools and working with young people is really ideal in this position. And so if a, like say a library's got an event coming up and they think this would make a great program for it, they would first contact you to let you know when the event is and just to check your schedule and see if you're able. And then they look into, after talking to you, that you might have a suggestion as to whether they would look into Humanities Nebraska funding or the Arts Council Nebraska Touring Program funding, just depending on the conversation. Right, depending on what they have in mind. They all have to be, I believe, either school or a nonprofit group. So in order to get that kind of funding. I've done lots of readings and things that were not funded by them in the past and now, especially when people have their own funding. But it's just, it's a negotiation process. And I think libraries are used to this because they've, a lot of libraries have applied for these Humanities Nebraska Speakers Bureau events. But maybe they haven't done anything with the Touring Program from the Arts Council. So it's good to call twilight first. Yeah, thank you. Do any of you have any questions? You know, as Krista mentioned, that you can type your questions in the question box. Or you can type a request to have your microphone muted and talk to us, which would be even more fun. And I just want to remind everyone, people who have been on that Tender Show regularly know this, all the links and URLs that we're mentioning will be included in the show recording afterwards. I'm putting them into our delicious account as we're speaking. So you'll be able to get access to all of them there. And any news articles I found too, I found the Omaha one. Oh good, excellent. To add to the ones we already had out there. Did you find the Lincoln Journal article? Yes, yep, that's our beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, friend of mine laminated that. That was really nice. You don't see that nice lamination all the time, do you? Not anymore. Did you want me to read a poem? We do want you to read a poem. I was just going to ask you to do that. I thought you never asked. And this is kind of to ask, answer a question that we had a note on. Where do your ideas for poems come from? And literally they can come out of anything, thin air. I read a lot. I get a lot of my ideas from the newspaper of all places because people do say weird things. And that's kind of sticking your mind like it reminds you of something or like science. I really, I have a science background. So I'm very interested in science. So, but anyway, it can come out anywhere. And this poem that I'm going to read you came out of a morning walk ahead. And I started playing around with words, which is one of the name of one of my programs in the past with humanities. We're playing around with words in this. So this comes out of that. And I have an epigraph from the poet Mary Oliver who says, you never know where a sentence will take you. Morning walk. Before sunrise under the halogen hunter's moon, an autumn morning stretches ahead of me a rhythm. Shy stars over the city, the inky dark, the concrete path on which I pound out duty, conjure up fantasy, those old tensions. In the street, vehicles sounding their singular verb, speed. On the other side at seasons end, the syntax of wheat field, muslin consonants remaining, its vowels of harvest long gone. At times I'd like to stick out my thumb, that potent comma, to risk all for a sentence into the unknown. Who knows where it might lead to those other lives scattering in each direction. But soon enough, a string of nouns pulls me back, keeps me moving on the straight and parallel, leads me home again. Where through my wild yard at first light, the quick red fox bounds. Its fluffy tail, the ultimate dash, the unanswered question. Where gathering blackbirds as if on cubes swirl up sudden, excess ellipses peppering the sky. Wow. Thank you. So that poem literally I started playing around with words that have to do with language. It's just fun. Yeah. You know, you get caught up in it. So you make notes and you play around and you combine it with nature and there you go. Yeah. That was great. Thank you. And that's from Potato Soup. That's a collection of... Nebraska Book Award. Yeah, I was going to say that's a Nebraska Book Award winner for poetry. 2004. 2004. It's from the Backwaters Press. In working with kids, anything surprise you? You've done that before of course, but in your new activities as state poet. I know there was a group of school kids at the event in January and they even presented you a poem. Yes, the School Across the Street. Is that St. Mary's? St. Mary's School. They had one of the classes came to the celebration of the New State Poet and they presented me... Oh, I should have brought that, but it was a wonderful little booklet. Congratulations. They had written it all out and they said, we hope you come to our school. So I'm still waiting for that invitation. Oh. But that was delightful. I was really pleased to see that group there. And I'm always surprised when I give workshops. What I do in my workshops, I focus on process instead of product. And so we'll do spontaneous writing. And the spontaneous writing, even though some students say, oh, that isn't how I write. I don't like to write like that. I write fantasy and I don't do this or one thing or another. They surprise themselves by what they can write out of a writing exercise. So surprise is something we like. Surprise is a good thing. Yes. You're part of a community of some very fine Nebraska writers. How do you see your role as state pool and kind of promoting other Nebraska writers? Right. I think that's important. And one of the things I want to do on my Facebook page is actually create greater community. So every chance I get, I'm trying to put links to other how it's like if there's a... For example, my friends Lucy Adkins and Becky Breed have a publication on writing in communities. That's the title of their publication. And it's just one of independent publishers award, which is a national award, which is just awesome. So I put that on my Facebook page. And it's things like that that we need to celebrate in our state because we are... There's a lot of writers, but we're most of us know each other and we learn from each other. So I think that's really important. And I see my role as a state poet to celebrate these kind of... Oh, for example, I did post the Young Writers Camp at the university this summer. And Omaha has the Fine Lines Young Writers Camp, which is... David Martin from Omaha has been conducting this workshop in Omaha for 15 years. So it's an ongoing, long-time event. Those are the kind of things I want to bring together. So if you have an idea and anyone out there listening to this broadcast has an idea of something that Twila might want to share with that whole writing community in Nebraska, just share that with Twila. And later on in the broadcast, we'll have her email address up so you can share the information. And she'll share it. Yeah, send me a website or a post. Well, it has to be an image or a link. They won't allow you to put word documents up, but I can link to a website or I can... If you're showing that Facebook page right there. This is Twila's Facebook page we're showing right now. You can see she linked to Nebraska Life Magazine, which is a link to a website. And then here's a link to a video about the Young Writers Camp. So it can be... And there's the silver medal winner for... To Lucy and Becky. Yeah. They won it with the IPI award. I think it's great. You're kind of publishing. It's fabulous. Yeah. And so those are the kind of things that we want to get out to more people. And I think social media is the way to go because it can go out kind of quickly. And I get a lot of views on those postings. Yeah. And comments. And comments. Yay. That keeps the community discussion going. Right. Yeah. That's right. So Twila, would you like to read something else for us? Sure. I brought three of my books that are currently in... They're still available. My first three books are not available. They're sold out or whatever, not circulation anymore. Although some libraries have them. I checked to see on WorldCat. And then any of you can do that too. And I know that the Heritage Room, the Jane Pope-Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors at Lincoln City Libraries at Bennett Martin Library, they have them all. Yes. They have all the books. They do. So you can... There are still ways to get them. They're out there. They're libraries. Libraries. And this book is actually available online through UNL Digital Commons. And this is Prairie Talk or Prairie Sweets, I'm sorry. Prairie Sweets. That's kind of an odd picture of it. But what this is is a collaboration between me and poems by me and drawings by Dr. Paul Johnsgard, who's an oriapologist. World renowned. World renowned. And he and I put together a collection and we donated our work to Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center down by Denton, Nebraska. And so they sell this as a fundraiser in their workshop or in their gift shop. But anyway, it was a fun collaboration because Dr. Johnsgard is an excellent artist. And he had a lot of drawings that he put with my short poems. And then when I ran out of poems, I said, well, what other drawings do you have? They all deal with tallgrass prairie. And so he says, oh, I've got lots of drawings. So he told me some subjects and I wrote some more poems. So this one I'm going to read is the lightning bug. He had already drawn this lightning bug. But he said, you know, you see lightning bugs at night. And he says, so I made it night. Lots of ink. He was a delight to work with. And this is called. I was going to ask before you read. You mentioned the digital commons. This book is in UNL, Digital Commons. Krista, we'll put that in the deletion. Yeah, I just found it. Yeah, I went looking for it. So yeah, that's the link directly to this online. It will be in the notes afterwards too. And is it that similar in the book? Or is it? I found a PDF. Yeah, it's a PDF of it. Just exactly as that, but just in as a PDF. And I have two of my out of print books are on there too. If you just type my name in. That one's under John's guard, but I have my own page, I guess. Okay, I'll read this poem called lightning bugs. What better show for mortals bursting with rivers of free light playing out above the darkened grass? Night opens the blue folds of the silk. Like stars blinking, they row awake. Countless beetles, their abdomens brimming with luminescence out from under snags and black leaves into the brief and cinnamon air. Over pond and blade in their appetite they bring us fire restoring a spark of salvation to our crumpled lives. These mysterious gatherers, these silent signalers, these copious lightning bugs of childhood delight. I think we all remember the first time they were made a few times in your childhood when we collected them for the mason jars. Oh yeah. Right? I think everyone did that. Pressure. And if you're from California, you come back to Nebraska just to do that. I don't think they have lightning bugs. No, they don't. It's too dry. Yeah, too dry. They do not get that opportunity until they come visit Aunt Mary Jo in Nebraska. That's right. They don't have cardinals either. They are not over on the other side of the mountains, I guess. Isn't that interesting? That is interesting. But you would know that with your background. Yes. You could probably tell us lots about the plants we have here that we're so fortunate to have that they don't have too. Yeah. Plants creep into me writing for some reason. I bet. I bet. You'll have to read us one with the plants creeping in. Actually, I see in the digital comments and I was looking you up there, you said that there's things here about organic farming. Right. That from your other previous slide. Yeah. Right. Right. My background, my education background is in horticulture and sustainable agriculture. So I've had work experience in those. Including a long-term stint at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Have you done any collaborations with Benjamin Rowe? I haven't. I haven't. But you're right. That would be a great time. He's on my radar. Very much. Yeah. He's a great guy. Yeah. Very serious advocate for native plants, which I am too. Let's see, what else are we going to talk about here? Well, of course, one of the things that we wanted to really highlight is the role of the state poet in inspiring an emerging generation of new writers. Right. And the writing workshops, that's one way of doing that. Have you thought of other kinds of ideas about that? Well, when we have, at some point when we have a website where it might become active even, where we would have access to current writers, I'm hoping to do some kind of, call it a webinar. I don't know, some kind of, you know, this is a big state. And to travel for one person to travel to the other end of the state is a long way to it. But if it could be some kind of a media like this where you could tape it, and maybe they could show it when it was convenient for them. I'm interested in that kind of thing. But I want to pursue this other, I'm slowly pursuing it. Let's put it this way, when you work with a lot of other people, it takes time. Sure, yeah. And so I'm starting with this one where we're going to have a pilot project, I hope, of five Nebraska writers from each of the kind of regions in Nebraska. Start with that, and see how that goes. And I'm talking about this all very preliminary at this point, but yeah. That's how things get started. That's right. We start a rumor, maybe. True. I look firmly for that. Put it out there, it'll happen. Yeah, but I think that would really help like libraries, for example, if you would like to bring together, I know at Lexington they were hoping to start, and if you're out there, start a writers group at the library for anyone who wanted to join it. And I think it's a great way to get people into the library. Libraries are so much different than they were in our younger years, our younger years. Right. A lot more than books now. So getting people in their community, creating community, I think is an awesome idea. And where schools have another agenda altogether, maybe they don't have the resources or the time to really pursue that. There might be a writers group at the school, but I'm not sure. After school, probably. In the after school. We are seeing some very exciting things in high schools with this louder than a bomb, how it's slam poetry, and it's taking off like wildfire. I think it's been spread all across the state, and it's a very, it's a performance poetry thing, and young people love it. And there's a ton of energy when you attend one of those events, isn't it? Yeah, it's very exciting. It is very exciting. I think it's a new wave of that kind of poetry, which gets people engaged. And I know there are teachers and librarians in Lincoln that I'm familiar with that are working in this area, lots of great students doing great projects. And the comments, some of the comments are that these students may not have, they kind of came out of their shell or something and they're out there, they're out there. And which is very exciting that the teachers weren't expecting that from their students. Yeah, very cool. Yeah, it's very cool. I like that. And well, so why is poetry important anyway? I've been asked that question, and I had to think about it. Well, one of the questions I got was, well, why is poetry relevant today? We're all about social media. We're Instagram and tweets, and everything has sped up. And poetry makes you slow down and contemplate. So when people go to a poetry reading, they love to be read too, but they may not pick up a book of poetry, but maybe they become engaged that way. And it is a form of slowing down and paying attention. It's a great use of language, in my opinion. It builds writing skills. If you study poetry, write poetry, you have to say the most in the least amount of space. And I think that helps you with your writing skills. It opens people to the world of literature. If you read other poets, there's, you know, poets have been writing for a long time, and I don't think they're going away anytime soon. I really believe that poetry helps you understand other people, especially if you read your poetry to a group, for example, and helps you understand each other. The human experience is all there in poetry. So that's why I think it's relevant. Don Welch talked about that in his presentation at the Nebraska Book Festival recently. That's right. You were there. I was there. Did you have any experiences like you talked about? His was, as a result, a beginner working with a classroom. Right. And he did the Poets in the Schools program through Nebraska Arts Council, which is no longer in effect. But he went to a lot of schools. I love that what he presented recently was that he highlighted like a grade school student, a middle school student, a high school student. And he quoted them and told the stories. And that's another thing poetry can do is tell stories. And so I like it in that respect. But Don Welch, you know, has been an educator for 50 years. Yes. And he has really done a great thing for Nebraska. We writers consider him to be one of the godfathers, the great writers of Nebraska. But yes, he's done a wonderful job. And it was a delight to hear his stories. I mean, they were very humbling stories. And if you're interested in some of those stories, we do have those on the Nebraska Center for the Book Facebook page. We have a little video that Rex took for us. And we put it up on the Facebook page. And it's just got one of these stories that he told during his presentation. It's quite delightful. Yes. So you mentioned writing in a group. Like, for example, say a library wanted to start a writer's group, either for adults or for school-age people, depending on what they think the need is in their community or the interest is. Have you ever been part of a writer's group yourself? How'd that work? Well, I'm in two writers groups right now. There's the Wesleyan Writers Group, which I joined, I'm going to say 30 years ago. Oh. Is that sponsored by the college then? No, it isn't. Yeah, it started 30 years. I can't remember. Wow. It hasn't been quite that long. But almost. Geez. Time flies. Anyway, so it's been going on a long time. And of course, we had one of our great Nebraska poet, Godfather's in there as one of the members was Bill Klefkorn. And he was my first writing teacher. So that was very exciting to me to become a part of that writer's group. And actually after he and Leon Satterfield passed away in 2011, we stopped meeting for a whole year. We didn't think we could go on. But we carried on. And we meet once, well, now we meet once every other month. And the rule is to bring something new that you've written. And it's more than just Wesleyan personnel. I haven't worked there for a long time, but it's loosely associated with Wesleyan. And it's a great way to try out new writing, to bounce something off of other people. That's the other thing, creating community. Try your work out on other people, you know, unless you're Emily Dickinson and want to stick all of your poems in the drawer. Most of us are trying to communicate with others and see how the ideas work in our poems. So building trust is kind of important, because you're going to be reading that work out to those folks, probably, or they're going to read it and talk about it. We're going to discuss it. Although I must say that once you start writing poetry and send your work out, for example, or read it to a group, you have to develop a little bit of a thick skin about your writing. If you're terribly sensitive about something, it's probably not ready for prime time. Too personal at this point. Too personal. The writer's group I'm in is five women, and we call ourselves the Prairie Trout. And yeah, it's just kind of one of those exotic things. And we have a lot of fun. It's a serious writing group, and we're all published out there, so it's more of a working writer's group. And again, you meet regularly, share your work, get feedback. That's right. It's wonderful. The rule there is you bring anything you've written in the last month, but if you don't have anything, that's fine too. It's just more or less we've got some work to share. So if a librarian was thinking about, they might like to start this kind of a group, they would bring together people who are interested by getting the word out that people could come, try and get them comfortable with each other, maybe give them a writing exercise to begin with. And then just start suggesting they bring what they're working on. Right. That's a great way to get started. In fact, if you wanted to try that and have a prompt, or everybody working on the same thing, and it's spontaneous writing, it can generate some very interesting work. And then you do get comfortable. Everybody's working on the same thing, everybody reads what they write. It helps you kind of get comfortable, like you said. The trust starts to build. So in a young person's writer's group, for example, they may not want their parents in it, for example. Or it's in a small town, everybody knows everybody. But yeah, that's a way to get started, and then it can build from there. You can say, well, if somebody wants to say, well, I'm working on this other thing that I'd kind of like to get your ideas on. Sometimes these things evolve, and maybe that's the best way, just have it evolve organically. Maybe it'll just be a drop-in thing. Well, not everybody, the same group is there every week. That might work, too. So is there a source for writing exercises? This would be something you could have on your website once you get going, and people could share their responses to it. But at this point, say a librarian's trying to start something like this. Is there a good source for them? Yeah, poets and writers who get on their websites, they will send out every week writing prompts for both poetry and fiction and nonfiction. And they're very well known, and they have a magazine, poets and writers, but their online sources are really fabulous. I mean, they have well-known poets or profile, and you can look up a poem of Ted Coosers, for example, on poets and writers, and they'll have several of his poems. So another writing exercise I highly recommend is to read a poem, any poem, and then respond to it, answer it, refute it, write your own, use the title, write your own poem underneath it, use the language out of that poem, an idea in the poem, a notion or an attitude, make your own poem. It's the easiest writing exercise on earth. So if you want to just start with somebody's poem and say it's one out of one of my books, then just write your own from it. Oh, that would be fun. Another fun thing to do in an interactive website, is you can suggest one and have people start giving you theirs. You can do that on Facebook, couldn't you? You could. You could. And so I often will read a poem and then I'll, in a writing group or in a workshop or something. And I'll say, okay, now, what would you write? Use your experience here or substitute your own language, or where will this go? That was one of the things I always thought about Twitter, is that I don't understand why it hasn't evolved into something that poets use to communicate with each other in poetry. Because 140 characters. It forces you to use the right words if you spend time on it. If you just dash something off, click, click, click, click, click, click, but if you did, it would be kind of a fun way for poets to communicate with each other. Right, exactly. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. That's a big difference. The right words. The poets are all about the right words. Cool. Your book, Dirt Size, is one of my favorites. Thank you. You collaborated with Linda Hesse from South Dakota. How did that come about? The two of you worked together. Yeah. Okay, so Linda Hesse, she's Swedish, so it's Havelström. She's a rancher-writer from western South Dakota, southwestern, right outside the Black Hills, on the plains. Beautiful area. I met her at Nebraska Muslims. She came there as a speaker. We hit it off. We had the same kind of farm ranch background, the rural background. We had the same kind of sensibilities. She's mostly a prose writer, but she's always written poetry. She's actually published a book or two of poetry, but she makes her living as a writer, basically. She has this beautiful ranch, two houses on the ranch, and one is the original ranch house. Wow. That's where she conducts writing retreats for women. You can get on windbreakhouse.com. Yeah. And you can negotiate with her to stay there, and she will help you with your writing. So the photo on the cover of the book? That is from her ranch. Oh, I want to help you get that close. My husband took this photo when we were up there one time, but it reminded me so much of the hills in northeast Nebraska where I grew up on the farm. I'm going to try and get as close as I can to that. I'll try to hold it steady. Because it is so beautiful. Thank you. And the cover? Here, I'm going to hold it like this. There we go. You can just see that just forever, sky, land. And it kind of fades to denim on the back, which that was very deliberate. The artist did a great job. But anyway, yes. And so this book is a collection, 50 of her poems, Linda's, and 50 of mine. So it's really almost like two books in one. And it wasn't a collaboration in the sense that we negotiated which poems or wrote poems together or traded back and forth. It's just that we trusted each other to put some of our poems together on that kind of loose ranch and farm theme. But of course there's so much more than just that. It's a, I guess, compilation of a lot of different attitudes here. And if you wanted, I'd read a poem out of here. Let's do it. This was called Work. And the epigraph comes from NPR News, which says, the honey bee can fly nearly five billion miles on one gallon of honey. I mean, talk about where do poems come from. I heard that on NPR News, and I'm going, there's a poem in there. So this is called Work. On spring days, you could hear it, buzzing cloud back and forth between fence row and hives. Over the regosa roses and the field, 40 acres of clover with its billions of tiny blues. My father grinned as he opened a top, brushed aside the bodies, pried out a frame oozing with sweetness. My hands on the extractor handle sticky with the great efficiency and substance of their labor. Worker bees, like my farmer father, combed those fields for a harvest of gold. Some years crop failure and bad luck, weather affected supply and yield. All that labor translated into a meager existence, a tightening of the belts. Worker bees kick out the drones to protect their winter food. Back then, all we needed was whatever we raised, planted, butchered, and preserved. There were no guarantees. We took care of the land. The land took care of us. All honey bees need is pollen and nectar, an unspoiled spring-fed creek, the occasional gentle hand to encourage them on. Extremely timely and all we know about bees right now, isn't it? That's right, exactly right. Everything in your life, I think, I believe, is food for poetry. When I heard the NPR news, the little tidbit there, I thought, okay, I know a poem. I could write about my dad keeping bees. That experience, you know, is now beekeepers are so much different. Everything is kind of industrialized. Hopefully, but the smaller farmers, the more sustainable farms are keeping bees on their land, which we need bees. And that, again, is another Nebraska Book Award poetry. It is. 2012. Is that right? 2012. The book was published in 2012, I believe. That's right. So anyway, it's fun, and this was a fun project put together so she invented every little thing that we're just so compatible. It was a lot of fun. I've actually collaborated with artists, art books, very limited production art books. Karen Koontz, the printmaker from UNL. She now has a studio called Consolation Studio, the 21st and O in Lincoln. And she is a world-famous printmaker. It's just very exciting we did. She did a wonderful print in Philadelphia when she was in residence there, and then she asked me for a poem, so that was a great collaboration. That's really cool. So I recommend another exercise is to go to an art museum and find something that speaks to you. There's a story in a painting or a sculpture or whatever. John Janavy, who teaches, who is retired from the university, he taught biology, would regularly have his biology one-on-one students go to Sheldon Art Gallery, our museum, and just look at the paintings and write something. There's some kind of nature going on in some of these poems, and we just wanted them to write about it, which I thought was awesome. Writers can get inspiration from so many places. The Quilt Museum would be a great one to go to. A lot of communities have art museums, like Mona out at Carney. Museum of Nebraska Art, that would be a great place for a writer's group to meet. It would, yes. That would be a wonderful place. Or to take a field trip from the Carney Library. It's not that far. It's not that far. That's right. So, there's poetry everywhere. Well, and I guess we just want to really encourage our listeners to think about programs that they might want to sponsor, that Tyler would be interested in hearing about, possibly be able to do. I wanted to point out that if you go to the Nebraska Arts Council website, that this is kind of a long URL, but you can find it here. This is where they have the Twyla Hansen Program. Any ideas? Poetry, reading, and discussion. And then Twyla actually reads her original and accessible poems and discusses how the landscape of the Great Plains has inspired, influenced, and shaped her writing. And this is where you would find more about that particular program. And then the next address, Humanities Nebraska's address. This is the Humanities Nebraska Program. And the name of the program is for the love of words, poetry, prose, and the creative writing process. And again, this is a writing workshop. It's a writing workshop that focuses on the creative process for both poetry and short prose. So these are the locations for more information on these things. And again, you don't have to jot these down. This will all be on our website where we keep this recorded archive for you. And then we have Christine Walsh, who's the assistant director at the Carney Public Library. Hi, Christine. Thanks for the plugs for Mona and the Carney Public Library. So we'll have links to those included as well. And then, Twyla, you've got some things coming up. I do. I have a few things on the books right now. I'm going to go into September. I'm doing, I'm presenting at the senior college, which they do a little different than UNL. UNL has an OLLI program and I presented there this earlier this last month. But I'm going out there to, they have like senior college, which is like, I think it's like a month or a semester long. Oh, really? Is it residential or most of the people local? I think most of the people are local. But anyway, so I'm giving a presentation with Dr. Charles Peake out there and an evening reading. I'm sure it's at the college and that's September 23rd. And then in September 27th, I'm going to the adult conference of the Plum Creek Literacy Festival. That's ensured. And so I'm going to be giving a workshop out there. And I've also been contacted by the Nebraska Press Women Association. I think I'll be going to York for a presentation there. I'm not sure that's open to the public, but there's different things that come up and if they're public, I will post them on my Facebook page. Oh, good. That's the best place to stay in touch. And so you can get on to the Facebook page and you can like it, which means you will follow and get the postings. So that's a great way to stay in touch. Or you can contact me by email or by phone. Just to remind you, there are some other these articles that are available that you might want to learn more about what's going on with Twyla. But again, I do think that the best connection is your Facebook page right now. It is. And on Facebook you can also send a message privately, directly to me and that's happened quite a few times. And then I can give them my Gmail account if they have more sensitive questions or they can even call me if they need to. So just a reminder, we are going to stay on for a little bit longer. So if anybody's got any questions, we want to be sure and get to them. You can type them into the chat box on the right hand side of your screen. Or if you have a microphone, you can just ask us to unmute your microphone and we'll actually talk to you person to person. So do you want me to close with a poem? I do want you to close with a poem. And you can close with more than one if you want to. We had asked the question earlier about how you might incorporate some of your horticultural background. Obviously the bees, that if there's anything else you want to talk about plants and their ability to inspire poetry. Well, I do have one of these called lettuce. Lettuce. Not the most romantic of plants. Well, you know, the biggest challenge for a writer is to take a very common topic. Like I've written a poem about potatoes. So it was a call actually a challenge, but take the most common thing and what can you possibly write about it. That's new. That's a great challenge for writers. Writers love challenges. Okay, so this is called lettuce. A luxury once reserved for nobility, so esteemed any Greek slave caught eating it was given 30 lashes. The emperor, Augustus, regularly ate it at the end of a meal. Later, Domitian would prefer it as an appetizer. Today, early, step out to your garden and simply harvest. Gathering proof that nature is benign and generous. It's of the genus Lactuca meaning milk. When cut, losing milk produces a later mild cousin to the wild prickly native. Look under the leafy canopy where gnats and mosquitoes rest where soil splatters upward from late night showers. The plants rise delicate and tender from their composted beds, greens, reds, sweet, buttery, smooth, broad, frilly. The leaf lettuce is to taste early summer. It's pale colors, it's temperatures, the earth, the air, the temporary rain. So that is a horticulture poem against that. Thank you. It makes you wonder how come lettuce would be a delicacy I know because of the taste, but it grows so easily. It's like so many foods when it was first discovered as a food. It was unknown. It's like the tomato which is a member of the deadly nightshade family. So you don't really want to eat the nightshade plant. And they thought it was poison. They were afraid, so they fed it to probably the people that worked for them first. It's like a servant class the tasters. Here, taste this. You don't die, but I'm going to eat it. So it's interesting. I'm interested in history and how things are the story behind the story. That makes for good poetry. Beautiful. Want to read a final poem for us? We've got time. I know it doesn't have to be final. But at least for this hour. Closing. The right word. The right word. This one is a short poem comes out of an experience I had for a few years as a writer in residence going down the Oregon Trail with teachers out of Hastings College and at the end we would climb the mountain in Wyoming. So this is the title of this is On Medicine Vote Peak Wyoming and the epigraph says USGS Marker 12,013 feet. On a clear day you can see forever almost south to jagged peaks in Colorado west and north to more Rockies and basins east to the Laramie range and beyond with a slow descent on to the plains the ground below frost lines spread out like a geological feast igneous sedimentary metamorphic underlying rocks revealing some of Earth's least known stories the horizon plain tricks on your perceptions it's witchery of light and shadow glacial carved lakes snow fields and quartzite the wind steady in your face you in thin air heavy weighing heavy concepts of time and nature and what came before and what will after so you simply take it in crunch and salt and all your brain can grasp the grin of your body climbing bringing you almost two years. Thank you. Thanks for asking me. It's fun. We've been talking with the Nebraska State Poet and I guess one of the things we want to encourage everybody to do is to think about how poetry fits in with the programming and the activities that you're involved in and to contact Twyla if you have some ideas. Thank you. Anything else for the good of the group? Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you everyone. Thank you for being here with us and joining us this morning. This is great and Rod and Mary Joe for hosting and thank you everyone for attending. The show has been recorded as usual and I think I captured all the different URLs and articles and websites that were mentioned so they will be included in the show notes as well afterwards. There we go. We'll be back with another episode of Encompass Live and when the recording is available probably later this afternoon we'll let you know. It will be right here. Yes, it will be here. Right below here is where we have our archived Encompass Live sessions on our websites. You can go there for all of our recordings from previous shows. That will wrap it up for this morning. I hope you'll sign up and join us next week and our topic is doing smart social media. We'll find out. Well, there's a lot of things out there and people have been using it for a long time. You mentioned Twitter and we've been showing off to Facebook but what do you count when you really do them well? Do you need to think about it ahead of time? Don't just jump in head first and don't know what you're doing. Maurice Coleman who is, he hosts the TS4Training podcast. He's on the ALA Learning Roundtable and he's a training, he's also a mover and shaker and he's also the training, what's his title here, technical trainer at Hartford County Public Library in Maryland and he goes around in the country doing these kinds of trainings and he's going to be on the line with us to tell us how to do our social media really well and get things out there. You're mentioning that you use it and you think it's a great way to get people connected in doing things and so if you've been doing it maybe and you want to know a little more, if you can do it better or you've just been thinking about it and your library Mo will be with us to tell us all about that next week. Cool, that sounds great. And if you are on Facebook, yes, Encompass Live is on Facebook too. So you can go ahead and like our Facebook page there. We do post notices of when new sessions are coming. I do reminders for the session that was just starting up this morning. I had a little post and when our recordings are available, I post in here as well. So that you can know when it's actually ready on our website. And then that, that will wrap it up for this morning. Thank you very much for attending and we'll see you next time. Thank you, Kristen. Bye bye. Bye everyone. Bye bye.