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Daniel Smith’s Ancestral featured in the news

Poetry captures sorrow and fallout of farm crisis

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]