She enjoys experimenting with different forms and styles of poetry. Wilda has won awards for formal and free verse and haiku, including the 2019 Founders’ Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She has been nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and a Touchstone Award.
Her first book of poetry: Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies: Poems from a Chinese Restaurant was published by Rockford Writers’ Guild Press. Much of the work on her second poetry book, Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (published in 2019 by Kelsay Books), was written during a Writer’s Residency on Martha’s Vineyard. Her third full-length book of poetry, At Goat Hollow and Other Poems was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. She is working on a book of poetry inspired by books and articles on scientific topics. For 14 years, she posted a challenge for other poets at wildamorris.blogspot.com until a technical glitch locked her out.
By Sharon Waller Knutson
Wilda Morris and I bonded because she is a county girl like myself and her style of writing and family stories reminds me of my own so it was no surprise that I fell in love with her book, “At Goat Hollow and Other poems.” “I grew up in my grandparents’ home, along with my mother and sister,” Wilda says. “Part of the time, my Uncle Norman and Aunt Irene lived in that same home with us. Part of the time, they lived on a little goat farm. My sister and I (and our cousins) loved to spend time with them out in the country. Uncle Norman stimulated our love of nature,” she says.
“I learned to love poetry from my grandmother, who recited many poems by heart, and my mother, who read poems to me. My first publication was in an anthology of poems by junior high students. I did not take any courses in English, literature, or poetry in college, but wrote poetry off and on during my life. I got more serious about poetry due to two factors: My first granddaughter died shortly before her seventh birthday and I needed some way to deal with my grief.
“Around the same time, I began volunteering part of each summer at the Green Lake Conference Center in Wisconsin and attending the annual writer’s conference there. Eventually I became the facilitator for their poetry workshops. Unfortunately, the whole writer’s conference was eliminated a number of years ago. I have attended numerous poetry workshops at The Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, and at Björklunden (a branch of Laurence University) at Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin.
“I have been married for 60 years, have 5 children, 15 grandchildren (14 living), and 8 great-grandchildren. Add spouses to those numbers, and we have quite a clan!”
“Wilda Morris' poems in At Goat Hollow and Other Poems are sentimental in the very best way, sharp-edged and clear. Morris shares all the reasons her Uncle Norman was beloved by children and looked down on by others in the family,” writes Laura Hansen, Author of Midnight River, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition Déjà Vu; and The Night Journey: Stories and Poems
“If Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic YA novel Little House on the Prairie were a person, it would grow up to be a collection of poetry titled At Goat Hollow and Other Poems by Wilda Morris. For this is a saga of our country’s Heartland, this is Americana at its charming best, “ says Karla Linn Merrifield, poet, and author of My Body the Guitar (Before Your Quiet Eyes Holograph Series), nominated for the 2022 National Book Award 2022.
“Wilda Morris has portrayed the “salt of the earth” nature of her uncle, and of herself, too. I can imagine myself running through the countryside of mid-America following her and Uncle Norman. yet I can smell and taste the India of my childhood. That makes this collection universal,” reminisces Bakul Banerjee, author of Bathymetry: Poems, and Synchronicity: Poems.
These powerful poignant poems from her book are a sample of her signature style and tell the story of her family of origin centered around her beloved uncle Norman.
Norman Explains Why He Sits on the Back Stoop
Where Father lives in town,
the road’s not paved.
Wild roses dot
the edges of the lawn.
I prefer to be out here
in the country
where those blossoms swarm
like bees, splash
pink among tall prairie grasses.
Monarchs embroider themselves
on milkweed stalks,
take off across unfenced fields.
Black snakes drink water
spilled by the well,
capture rats for their lunch
while I sit on the back stoop,
rest from my work in the garden,
roll a cigarette. Irene brings me a bowl
of beans, a cup of strong, black coffee.
I need nothing more.
How to Be Uncle Norman
after Catherine Lamb
Be first-born in a large family of limited means.
Outwardly accept your father’s dictum
that it’s your responsibility to stay home
and help support your younger siblings.
Quit going to church.
Work when you feel like it.
Fish when you feel like it.
Loll around doing nothing when you feel like it.
Sit in the crook of a tree and read.
Smoke. Roll your own cigarettes.
Roll your eyes when your father
tells you to do something.
Be sure your eyes twinkle
whenever a child is near.
Wink your eye at the cute young woman
from Minnesota you meet at City Park.
Do not apply for a regular job.
Don’t even own a tie.
Marry that cute young woman
you met at the park.
Try to have children.
Keep a box of old wooden spools
under your bed
for children to play with.
Show your nieces
how to cast a fishing rod
off the front porch.
Teach them to roll cigarettes.
Take nephews to a dark field
to watch the Northern Lights.
Learn the hard way to be sure
no wasp made its nest
where you throw the blanket to sit on.
Laugh at the children’s repeated riddles.
Cheer them as they walk the rolling oil barrel
across the lawn or jump rope
as it turns beneath their feet.
Tell tall tales. Accept the scoffing responses
of your siblings who know better.
End your life with emphysema,
and the lasting adoration of nieces and nephews.
While I Cook Pasta for a Family Dinner
I am ten years old.
I tell myself I am stirring
the pot so the noodles
won’t stick, though I know
there is plenty of water
and it is boiling hard enough.
I stir hard, not wanting to hear
my relatives’ harsh words
about Uncle Norman,
how he isn’t a reliable worker
with Grandfather on his plastering jobs,
but doesn’t try to get other work.
Then they begin
on Aunt Irene’s hypochondria.
Their words are hot as steam
from the pasta pot.
I think they’re unfair
but surely they wouldn’t listen
to a child like me.
Aunt Abbie comes to the kitchen,
a scowl on her usually cheerful face.
She puts the percolator on the stove.
I say, I think Uncle Norman might
be very different if he had children.
My aunt turns her head toward me,
almost smiling, and says,
I think you may be right.
I stop stirring.
.
Pennies
Uncle Norman never had much
money but he was rich in kin,
so he saved each penny
that came his way. However many
he’d collected became his gift
when another niece or nephew
got married or gave birth.
When I was a bride, he gave me
a penny-filled candy dish,
long-stemmed cut-glass,
a wedding gift to Grandmother
years before. When I counted
the copper coins, I was surprised
at how they added up: seven dollars
and thirty-five cents. The dish
still stands tall in my china cabinet.
I’ve forgotten how I spent the pennies,
but on holidays I bring the dish out,
fill it with candies,
sweet as an uncle’s love.
Time Travel
My ribs are railroad tracks
leading me back to an Iowa childhood.
The metal wheels rattle,
course down steel tracks,
whistle blowing.
I ride the train back
to the 1940s, back
to the house Grandfather built,
the home we sometimes shared
with Uncle Norman,
who took his nieces to search
for banded rocks in the railroad bed
and walk those long straight balance beams
which stretch east to the ocean,
west beyond sunset.
I return to that parallel world
each time I touch my ribs.
I love how Wilma's words turn simple moments and memories into something special!
ReplyDeletePennies welled me up, different times. Love it!
ReplyDelete