Poets to See at AWP: Dorinda Wegener

I met Dorinda Wegener in the winter of 2006. I was immediately taken with the artistry that permeates her poems, as well as the sensitivity with which she conveys her spot-on appraisals of other poets' work--mine included. Even while we were attending MFA residencies, there were no comments about my work that I valued more highly than Dorinda's. And so it was quite natural for me to continue to depend upon her feedback after graduation, which I continue to do. 

As you can read in her bio below, she is a Co-Founder of Trio House Press. What is not stated is that she is the Managing Editor who oversees all aspects of book design and production, inside and out, and is personally responsible for the press' beautiful and appropriately designed covers, portraying on the outside what is conveyed between them. It is no wonder that whenever my manuscript was accepted last year by CW Books that I hired her to design its cover, and many other poets publishing with other presses do the same. 

But it is Dorinda's poems that I want to introduce to you. They are smart poems that deal with significant issues in a diction that is both pleasing on the page and musical on the stage--something quite rare these days. Although she has yet to publish her full-length manuscript, Four Fields, she has a tasty sample of poems in her recently released chapbook from Damfino Press, Five Poems, that can be ordered HERE. 

Dorinda Wegener is a poet you should make plans to meet during AWP. Most of the time she will be found at the Trio House Press Book Fair Table (#1204), where she will be happy to make your acquaintance. If you don't know her work, you should get to know it, as she is an emerging poet who will soon be a force to be reckoned with. Here then is a sample poem that first appeared in Mid-American Review:

Noun : Adjective : Idiom : Verb

It’s the sound of ice from a tumbler: small

and round, but sure of how to care for itself—

It is a river of ink soft-seeping into the page.

It arrives in early morning; breaks

night down to shards of history—

It floats like a corpse: bobbing up, bobbing up.

It’s a slim paper-cut kiss upon fingertip.

A stone passed from tongue to tongue—

It is held in the left hand as the right takes fire.

Dorinda Wegener is Co-founder of Trio House Press, a non-profit publisher of distinct voices in American poetry. Her chapbook, 5 Poems by Dorinda Wegener, was solicited by Dămfīno Press for their Five Poems Series 2015. She is a former Showcased Poet selected by the NH State Council of the Arts and the NH Poet Laureate, now anthologized within Poet Showcase: an Anthology of New Hampshire Poets (Hobblebush Books, 2015). Wegener’s work appears in The Antioch Review, Indiana Review, and Hotel Amerika, et al.