The Poetry Project

Maureen Owen

Poet is standing on a wide, white sand beach with blue/green ocean close-beside to her left and as horizon behind her.  Sea breeze blowing poet's hair forward and partially covering her face.  Poet is wearing a black winter coat over a light sweater with wide horizontal green stripes. A small, colorful cloth and woven Peruvian bag is slung over her right shoulder and across her torso.  Poet is slightly squinting from hair and sun and smiling.  A sky layered of blues and paler washes of blues and way-subtle pinks spread and fill the space above the water.
© Rachael Pongetti

Maureen Owen’s title, let the heart hold down the breakage Or the caregiver’s log, is just out from Hanging Loose Press. And hot off the press is Poets on the Road, a collaborative reading tour blog with Barbara Henning in print from City Point Press. She is former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books, currently celebrated in a two vol. recap by The Poetry Collection at The University at Buffalo. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Edges of Water from Chax Press. Her title Erosion’s Pull from Coffee House Press was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her collection American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. Other books include Imaginary IncomeZombie Notesa brass choir approaches the burial groundThe No-Travels Journal, and Untapped Maps. She has most recently published work in Three FoldDispatchesPositive MagnetsHurricane ReviewThe Denver QuarterlyBlazing StadiumThe Brooklyn Rail, The Cafe Review, and Posit. An instructor of numerous workshops and classes in poetry and book production, her awards include grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Fund for Poetry and a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at Naropa University, both on campus and in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program, and served as editor-in-chief of Naropa’s on-line zine not enough night. She can be found reading her work on the PennSound website.