About Joanne

As a teenager, like so many other young people, I started experimenting with writing poetry. I wrote truly bad poems, full of adolescent emotion, drama, and angst and lacking basic knowledge of how to shape it into art. But even then, I felt writing as a powerful tool for self-expression. My first published poems appeared in my high school literary magazine.

When I was a young mother with a newborn baby at home, I kept journals and began to write more seriously. Part of my motivation to write was to process the dizzying experience of becoming a parent. Writing helped me discover what I was thinking and feeling. Over time, writing became an important daily practice for me. I woke up early, before the rest of the household, before work or school responsibilities, to give attention to the words in my head and heart in that brief silence. The Northfield Women Writers invited me to join their writing group, encouraging a fledgling newcomer to learn to be brave on paper. I was honored to be mentored by those wise women.

I began taking occasional writing classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis in the 1980s. Being exposed to more poets, a variety of writers and styles, and engaging with their work in structured ways, delighted me. The more poetry I devoured, the more leaps of insight, music, and originality I discovered in the language. Later, when I felt certain that writing was meant to be a bigger part of my life, I was accepted into the MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. (One of my favorite teachers from The Loft, Deborah Keenan, was a professor there. I was eager to do more in-depth study with her, and with other teachers like her!) I took one evening class each semester and a few intensive summer courses so I could study creative writing while teaching full-time in an elementary school, my constant “day job.” I earned my MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline, focusing on both creative nonfiction and poetry, in 2002.

In addition to my MFA program, I sought out writing workshops with various teachers over the years: at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center with poet Mark Doty, summer 1997; the Spoleto Writer’s Workshop in Spoleto, Italy, summer 1999; a year of on-line mentoring with poet Jim Moore, 2006; the Split Rock writer’s workshop with poet Ted Kooser at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, summer 2007; and a Collegeville Institute workshop with Michael Dennis Browne in July 2010. I was also selected to be part of the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series program to work for a year with local and visiting poetry, fiction, and nonfiction mentors and a cohort of lively, smart “co-mentees” in 2009-2010, including giving a public reading with the mentors. I am deeply grateful to all the teachers who have inspired and taught me about clear and artful writing.

Now, as I approach the end of my 40+ year career teaching young children, I look forward to devoting even more time and energy to my craft, continuing to learn about, experiment with, and create poetry. Reading the work of other poets and writing “morning pages” has become a daily spiritual practice that is both a commitment and a joy.