As a mature nomad poet, Hedwig has shifted her writing from performance poetry, a genre she named as part of efforts to revive an interest in poetry by the masses with her radio band work. Since popularization of poetry has been accomplished with the progression of spoken word genres like slam, the "original performance poet" is now free to restore the gravitas and ethos of these sorts of postmodernized forms. This shift could be due in part to the doctorate in creative writing received after her successful career as a performance poet during the 1980s and avant-gardist in the 1970s. She is a certified leader in bridging the best of both worlds, popular and academic: "I write for books and media with a modernist attachment to the great achievements of the past along with an inherited love for the working class and farmers. I am a futurist in the early 20th century sense, like Mayakovsky, along with the contemporary expanded version that sees technological advancement progressing our society like a science fiction novel.” Her catchphrase for 2011 is “I’m a bridge. Use it.”
Publications and Prizes
Books:
Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street (Slough Press, 2006), Polish Gypsy With Ghost (Shinebone Press, 1998), Slow Paradise (Shinebone Press, 1998), Snatches of the Visible Unreal (Back Yard Press, 1990)
Anthologies:
Hispanic American Literature Encyclopedia (Facts On File, 2007)
Journals:
Art Mag 29, Karawane, Poetry Repair Shop
Performances:
Borders Books - Houston, TX (2008), Polish American Historical Association, Annual Meeting - Washington, DC (2008), Cafe Krzystofore, Krakow, Poland (2004), Thirteen Donuts Radio Drama, KRVS-FM (2000), Audio: Intellectual Love (Perfection Productions) (1990), KUT-FM Radio, Austin, Texas (1986), Maple Leaf Club, New Orleans (1984), Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute (1983), Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin (1977)
Prizes:
LDA Artist Fellowship, Audio Theatre Award, NEA/Contemporary Art Center, Fulbright Senior Fellowship, and more.
Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte, Guide to Philosophy by Witold Gombrowicz, New Polish Writing by Chicago Review, Bury Me Standing by Fonseca
Favorite Books:
All Szymborska
Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamson
Everything is Illuminated by Foer
Interview with a Vampire by Rice
Favorite Authors:
Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Eliot, Pound, David Mamet, Jonathan Saffron Foer, Witold Gombrowicz, Mayakovsky, Bialoszewski, Zbigniew Herbert, Marjorie Perloff, Vaclav Havel, Allen Ginsberg, Skip Fox, Darrell Bourque, Jerry McGuire, Sienkiewicz, Knut Hamson, Bob Dylan, Anne Rice, Charles Bukowski
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the writers listed in it.
Listing last updated: December 26, 2010