A book launch party for Feet in the Waves: Poems of Lake Superior was held at The Well Read Raccoon & Curiosities store. Editor Raymond Luczak organized this event which took place on Friday. The event featured a welcoming environment, refreshments, and a place for some of the many featured poets to share their work and love for the Great Lakes. The new book features over 36 poets, seven of which showed up for the event.
Raymond Luczak, the editor of the book, grew up in Ironwood, and has lived in Houghton for nine years. In an interview with him after the event, he talked about how grateful he was to the venue, and about his preference in local independent bookstores over large chains. Luczak said, “[It’s] not a corporate bookstore. You’ve got to do personality, character… We need to help support independent bookstores because they are more personal.” When talking about the anthology, Luczak spoke about the area’s environment as an inspiration. “I feel like Lake Superior is trying to be an ocean… it’s not easy to love,” Luczak said.
Beverly Matherne, the former director of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Northern Michigan University and U.P. Poet Laureate, read her poems “In Winter” and “Ode to the Reverend Ralph Stickleman.” In an interview with her after the event, she shared that she grew up in a Cajun French family in Louisiana, and found her passion for language from her father, who would recite Shakespeare during family events. Once she moved to the UP, she started writing poetry inspired by walks she would take in nature with the UP Land Conservancy. “That’s what really opened the natural world of the UP to me,” Matherne said, “I’m forever grateful to those people.” During the interview, she contrasted Lake Superior against the muddy Mississippi River. “It’s so gorgeous. And so awe-inspiring… the water was so clear, and I had never seen that,” Matherne said.
Another one of the poets, Jayson Iwen, a teacher at the University of Wisconsin at Superior and an awarded published author, commented on the importance of the Great Lakes to him, “They’re one of the most precious freshwater sources on earth and they’re just going to become more and more important… you know, I like to write about where I live, I’m sort of an environmental writer,” as well as his opinion on the event itself, “It was such an intimate, cozy space that I think worked really well; so yeah, it was worth the [four hour] drive.”
