Beverly Matherne

Beverly Matherne, Poet Laureate of Michigan's Upper Peninsula from March 2023 to June 2025, is Professor Emerita of English at Northern Michigan University, in Marquette, Michigan, where she served as director of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing and poetry editor of Passages North literary magazine. She lives in Ishpeming, Michigan, far from Grand Point, her birthplace along the Mississippi near New Orleans. Despite the distance that separates her from Louisiana, she is still inspired by the boundless wealth of her Cajun and Creole heritage.

At the same time, she treasures the new discoveries and alliances she has made since her relocation to Michigan in 1991 and her more recent travels across the Upper Peninsula as poet laureate. Pleased to serve the Upper Peninsula Land Conservency as poet, she is focusing more and more on nature poetry. The author of five books and two chapbooks of bilingiual poetry, her latest title ― Potions d'amour, thés, incantations / Love Potions, Teas, Incantations ― is from Harvard Square Press (2023). In homage to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where many species are endangered, she is completing a book of haiku.

The recipient of seven first-place prizes, she is winner of the Hackney Literary Award for Poetry and three-time winner of Le Prix CODOFIL en poésie. Widely traveled, she has done over 400 readings across the United States, Canada, and France as well as in Belgium, Germany, Spain and Wales. Venues that have welcomed her include Poets House in New York City, The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

Beverly Matherne holds a Ph.D. in Drama from St. Louis University, and M.A. and B.A. degrees from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. After receiving her doctorate, she did extensive work in French literature and critical theory at the University of California, at Berkeley.