Minnesota State University Reporter

Issue date: 2/7/08 Section: Good Thunder Reading Series

In elementary school, James Armstrong won a poetry prize for a poem about an owl.

He's been writing ever since.

Armstrong kicks off the spring semester's Good Thunder Reading Series today with a talk on craft at 3 p.m. in the Ostrander Auditorium and a reading from his published work at 7:30 p.m. in Centennial Student Union 253.

Armstrong has always carried an interest in writing, gaining encouragement from teachers and family in his younger years, but it wasn't until after college that he became serious about it.

Like many newly graduated college students, Armstrong took a corporate job to pay the rent. Throughout his twenties, he remained side tracked from pursuing his dream job of a career in writing. At last separating himself from stable income employment, Armstrong earned an MFA at Western Michigan University and went on to teach English and creative writing at Northwestern University, the School of Art Institute of Chicago and finally at Winona, where he and his family live today.

"It's a lot better teaching about poetry then working as a tax attorney," Armstrong said.

Between his start as a writer and now, Armstrong has had work published in the "Triquarterly," "Orion," "New York Times Book Review and" "Shade" in 1999 a book of his poems "Monument in a Summer Hat," was published. Armstrong's latest book, "Blue Lash," came out in 2006.

"Armstrong's work is focused on the nature and our relationship to it," said Richard Robbins, director of the Good Thunder series and an English professor. "His recent book, which is composed entirely of poems of Lake Superior, uses the lakes as a starting point for mediating about the immensity and fragility of the world around us."

The inspiration behind Armstrong's poems lies within the upper Midwest wilderness, where he says the mind intersects with landscape.

Staying away from writing personal poems, Armstrong said he has dared to dive into the deep valves of his soul and has no problem traveling into history, which is what he's working on now.

"I have a large manuscript with a lot of political poetry," he said. "But it's a risk because historical poetry can be very easily dated or shrill."

Armstrong said he likes poetry because it's easier for the mind to work on the smaller scale of that type of writing.

"I tend to write in spurts," he said. "I'm stuck on the level of language. I find fiction exhausting."


Leah Christensen is a Reporter staff writer

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