Poetry

Dakota Dreaming returns us to the ancient core of poetry a spiritual quest. But this book offers no standard hero's journey--no daring descent int the underworld, no triumphant, hopeful return. It offers, rather, a gathering of visions received by one who has learned to dwell indefinitely in the liminal space between realms. While much of the collection in written in the Japanese haibun form, Buettner's imagery is rooted deep in North American prairie soil. Her poems are like "abandoned houses that let the gold of afternoon light filter in through open windows," offering some brief, imperfect respite for "those of us who have lost our way." And when the daylight fades and darkness becomes complete, Buettner guides us: "I borrow the light / of snow."

--Brendan Stermer, author of Forgotten Frequencies (NDSU Press, 2023)

"Unflinching, attentive, both reverential and honest, the poems in Nick Bertelson's Harvest Widows address what it is to be midwestern."--James McKean, author of Headlong, Tree of Heaven, and We Are the Bus

Nick Bertelson is a fourth-generation farmer from southwestern Iowa. His poetry has appeared in Coe Review, Valley Voices, Prairie Fire, and North American Review, as a James Hearst Poetry Prize finalist.

Harvest Widows is the second chapbook to be published as NDSU Press’s annual Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Award, and the fourth chapbook to be produced by publishing students on turn-of-the-twentieth-century hand-letterpress equipment.

At a relentless pace, Timothy Iver Murphy (1951–2018) produced an incredible amount of poetry in the last years of his life. A sample of his brilliant work is included in this posthumously published collection.

Hiking All Night is an account of the simple pleasures of Murphy’s life: hunting, companionship of faithful dogs, farming, and hiking — a lifelong habit carried over from his training as an Eagle Scout and member of the Order of the Arrow. Murphy extends his reach beyond his native region of the northern plains, across the United States and as far as the Himalayan Mountains. Throughout Hiking All Night, familiar inspirations appear, including homage to the masters of literature who have formed his craft and the religious beliefs that anchored his life. Most poignantly, Murphy includes relationships with friends and family, the physical and emotional struggles of this mortal world, and reflections upon regrets and restoration.


hardcover/373 pages/3 color inserts
Preface by former Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason

Hiking All Night is Timothy Murphy's penultimate collection of poetry. Forthcoming in summer 2021, NDSU Press will publish Last Poems, written by Murphy during the final months of his life.

In Hunter’s Log: Volumes II & III, you’ll find Tim’s love for all the rites and tribulations of rising at O Dark Thirty, God O'clock to take his dogs out for training or hunting and for days that conclude with a pheasant gumbo steaming on the stove.

“Murphy is not just our best hunting poet . . . he is also our bard of all things North, with the blood of the Irish and Vikings in his veins. . . . No one can write better about the chill that always lurks in the northern breeze even on summer evenings, or the knowledge of mortality seasoned in the present even in the best of days. These volumes are full of the rueful mortal comedy of a man who has seen friends and dogs die and knows he is not immune.” Timothy Murphy’s “hunting, as it should, has given him the eye of a painter and a botanist’s knowledge welded seamlessly together by the ear of a poet.” —Stephen Bodio, book editor for
Gray’s Sporting Journal, author of eleven books, including A Rage for Falcons: An Alliance between Man and Bird

“Murphy, a poet, was perhaps the best known literary figure living in North Dakota.”
—Mike Jacobs, former editor and publisher of Grand Forks Herald

In a rich yet often austere setting of the Great Plains, Bonnie Larson Staiger's second poetry collection--In Plains Sight--brings those realities into full view through the lens of the prairie ethos. In moments when the natural world confounds the objective and logical world, she brings us into an encounter with a coyote, a sub-zero walk after a blizzard, or a humorous swipe at a fast-food restaurant. Paperback with French flaps.