Dan Smith will be reading at Arcadia Books, Spring Green, Wisconsin, Sunday August 22, 2021 | 3:00PM – 4:00PM. Prior to the event, James Bohnen of Arcadia spoke with Smith about Ancestral and Smith’s writing process.
You can buy your copy of Ancestral from us prior to the event or in the store on the day.
by Barry Adams, Wisconsin State Journal
| Daniel Smith is featured in the Sunday, July 18, 2021 edition of the Wisconsin State Journal. Barry Adams interviewed Smith at his home near Arena, Wisconsin. In Ancestral, from Water’s Edge Press, Smith draws on his decades of farming and his experiences as a farm financial counselor in Wisconsin. Many of the poems express the anguish people feel when they realize they can no longer sustain the family farm. Yet Smith’s poetry goes beyond such stories and reveals his deep and enduring connection to the land. From the article: “It bothers me a lot,” Smith said. “The economic,social and cultural impacts of farming are very complex. I think going through all of that and having experienced the emotional turbulence of that really helped me write about it and writing helped me deal with it.” |
Read the article and listen to Dan read “Dry Dirt,” a poem from Ancestral. [Permalink] |
In celebration of National Poetry Month, Arcadia Books (Spring Green, WI) hosted Daniel and Austin Smith for a conversation about poetry, the influence of writers like Tobias Wolff, Lucien Stryk, Michael Mott, and Gary Snyder, and how growing up in a community of writers shaped them both. Daniel and Austin both share selections of their work.
Consider this video to be a free course in how to read, craft, and appreciate poetry from two fine American poets who happen to be father and son. The two discuss origins of their poems, their interdependent growth as writers, the impact of place in their writing, and how effective it is to blend genres.
Ancestral by Daniel Smith is the newest book from Water’s Edge Press, due out June 1. We agree with Austin’s assessment that his father’s book “Conveys emotion via the physical world.” Rooted in a Midwestern landscape, Ancestral’s sense of place is never “claustrophobic,”
Austin says, adding that the poems “remind [him] of the poets [he loves], like Ted Kooser, who writes so beautifully about Nebraska. There’s a universality to the poems despite their placedness.”
Enjoy the video and pre-order Ancestral. Austin’s books are available here.
We’re excited to announce that we will publish a collection of poems by poet Daniel Smith. ANCESTRAL will be released early summer 2021. Daniel Smith’s ANCESTRAL draws from the thirty years he farmed his family’s dairy farm in northwestern Illinois.
With poetry grounded in the rural Midwest, ANCESTRAL explores a family’s deep attachment to the land, the physical work of farming and the emotional disruption one endures when such a life is no longer sustainable. These poems provide a powerful depiction of the changes impacting agriculture and our rural communities.
Follow us for updates on Dan’s book as well as for all of our authors.
Ancestral
$25.00
A Hollow Bone
$16.00
Lamenting My Failure to Learn How to Tap Dance: And Other Missteps
$18.00
Something Novel Came In Spring
$15.00
Poems from the Winter House
$25.00
