Calling - Sharon Chmielarz

Calling

by Sharon Chmielarz

In Calling, Sharon Chmielarz recalls the lives of those, who, in Elisabeth Bishop’s words, in “Brazil, January 1, 1502  “... who kept calling, calling to each other...”  They are known and unknown  painters, musicians, the local beautician, islanders and immigrants.  They are subjects for our attention, long overdue.  These are portrait poems serving as windows into the lives of Monet’s egg girl, Galileo’s daughter, the Two Fat Ladies.  They are a record of the people we come from, recorded in lyric and narrative, with dashes of humor and anger, love and sadness at the irrefutable wash of history the poems find themselves in.  They are women who are showcases of strength, reflection, and the ordinary transformed by the desire to be counted.  They seek the remembrance due the neglected.  The poet’s drag-net sweeps them all in. 

BIOGRAPHY

Sharon Chmielarz’s books of poetry include Calling, The Sky Is Great The Sky Is Blue, The Rhubarb King, The Other Mozart,  But I Won’t Go Out in a Boat, Different Arrangements, and one chapbook, Stranger in Her House. Her work has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, and in ‘99, ‘01, ‘02, ’05, ’07 and ‘10 nominated for a Pushcart.  It’s been featured on American Life in Poetry (‘07) and individual poems translated into French and Polish.  The Rhubarb King, won a Merit Award from the 2007 Midwest Independent Publishers Association. The Other Mozart has been made into a two-part opera. Her book Calling was first runner up in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, 2011, for poetry.

UPCOMING READINGS

Feb. 10, 2012:  Banfill Locke Center for the Arts

early 2012, but as yet undated: North Star Chapter of the German Russians, Berea Lutheran Church, 7538 Emerson Ave. S., Mpls. (Richfield)

WEBSITE
www.sharonchmielarz.com

PURCHASE
Amazon


OTHER BOOKS PUBLISHED

The Sky Is Great The Sky Is Blue (Whistling Shade Press, 2010)

The Rhubarb King (Loonfeather Press, 2006)

The Other Mozart  (Ontario Review Press/ imprint W.W. Norton, 2001)

But I Won’t Go Out in a Boat (New Rivers Press, 1991)

Different Arrangements (New Rivers Press, 1982)

Chapter book: 

Stranger in Her House (Poetry Harbor, 1990) -- contact author through www.sharonchmielarz.com to purchase

Children’s:

Pied Piper of Hamelin  (Stemmer House, 1990) (out of print)

The End of Winter  (Crown, 1992) (out of print)

Down at Angel’s (Ticknor & Field/ Houghton Mifflin, 1994)

PUBLISHER
Loonfeather Press
www.loonfeatherpress.com