Heart Turned Back is about looking and listening; about trying to understand not just humans, but animals and plants and rocks. The poems come from a slow and painstaking education in the things of the world, from learning that we have only a limited time to comprehend, then translate and transform that comprehension into words. The poems love language; they are passionate yet restrained, written in both form and in free verse. Bertha Rogers's poems appear in journals and anthologies and in her four previous collections. She lives in Delhi, New York. ""In theme and mood she is something like Robert Frost or Seamus Heaney""-New Poetry
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In theme and mood she is something like Robert Frost or Seamus Heaney" --New Poetry
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More than 250 of Bertha Rogers's poems appear in journals and anthologies, and the collections Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2010), Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries (Six Swans Artists Editions, NY, 2005); The Fourth Beast (chapbook, Snark Press, IL, 2004); A House of Corners (Three Conditions Press, Maryland Poetry Review Chapbook Contest Winner, 2000); Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen, NY 1991). Her translation of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, was published in 2000 (Birch Brook Press, NY), and her translation of the riddle-poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, will be published in 2010 (Birch Brook Press, NY).
In 2002 she received a Ludwig Vogelstein Grant for poetry and visual art; and in 2006 she was the recipient of an AE Ventures Grant for excellence in both poetry and visual art and for contributions to the field through the not-for-profit literary press and center she founded in 1992, http://www.brighthillpress.org at Bright Hill Literary Center in Treadwell, NY. The organization is distinguished for its reading series, Word Thursdays; its poetry publishing program, Bright Hill Press; its children and high-school literary programs, and its word-and-image exhibits, as well as its 10,000-volume humanities library. The organization also developed and administers, in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York State Literary website and print map, http://www.nyslittree.org. She has served as a judge for local, regional, and NY state NEA Poetry Outloud Contests, and she was a member of the selection committee for the first New York Writers Hall of Fame.
Her word and image works have been shown in hundreds of juried and solo exhibits throughout the US and Europe and are collected in the Harry Ransom Archive at the University of Texas and other private and public collections. In 2009 she was awarded a DEC grant for her interdisciplinary exhibit "Riddle Me This: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems Translated & Illuminated"; the show was at DCHA Museum, Hanford Mills Museum, and the WH Adams Bookstore; it is on tour and being shown through April at the Downtown Writer's Center GallerY, Syracuse.
In 2007 Rogers received the 2007 Teaching Artist Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award from Partners for Arts Education and the Association of Teaching Artists in New York. She serves as program director for the New York State Literary Web Site, nyslittree.org, publisher of the first Literary Map of New York State (2005), in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, and she is a member of the New York State Writers in the Schools Panel. Her web site is http://bertharogers.com.
In 2002 she received a Ludwig Vogelstein Grant for poetry and visual art; and in 2006 she was the recipient of an AE Ventures Grant for excellence in both poetry and visual art and for contributions to the field through the not-for-profit literary press and center she founded in 1992, http://www.brighthillpress.org at Bright Hill Literary Center in Treadwell, NY. The organization is distinguished for its reading series, Word Thursdays; its poetry publishing program, Bright Hill Press; its children and high-school literary programs, and its word-and-image exhibits, as well as its 10,000-volume humanities library. The organization also developed and administers, in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York State Literary website and print map, http://www.nyslittree.org. She has served as a judge for local, regional, and NY state NEA Poetry Outloud Contests, and she was a member of the selection committee for the first New York Writers Hall of Fame.
Her word and image works have been shown in hundreds of juried and solo exhibits throughout the US and Europe and are collected in the Harry Ransom Archive at the University of Texas and other private and public collections. In 2009 she was awarded a DEC grant for her interdisciplinary exhibit "Riddle Me This: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems Translated & Illuminated"; the show was at DCHA Museum, Hanford Mills Museum, and the WH Adams Bookstore; it is on tour and being shown through April at the Downtown Writer's Center GallerY, Syracuse.
In 2007 Rogers received the 2007 Teaching Artist Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award from Partners for Arts Education and the Association of Teaching Artists in New York. She serves as program director for the New York State Literary Web Site, nyslittree.org, publisher of the first Literary Map of New York State (2005), in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, and she is a member of the New York State Writers in the Schools Panel. Her web site is http://bertharogers.com.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well crafted and complex,
By Zach Hudson (Troutdale, OR) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry) (Paperback)
Bertha Rogers write complex free verse frequently about nature, farming, animals and family. Her poetry, lacking any kind of sound or rhythmic device, relies mostly on image, metaphor and juxtaposition, her best poems leaving the reader enjoying the pictures seen or the language used to describe them. In theme and mood she is something like Robert Frost or Seamus Heaney.Here's the thing: her poetry is not easy. No one says it should be; even before the obfuscatory modernists got their hands on it, good poetry was not necessarily easy to understand the first time through. I'm just saying that many things about Rogers' poetry make it difficult, like a tight knot of words that the reader must unpick. Consider these lines: At sixteen I cut into the worm, I contemptuously dissected the frog, laid out on mirrored metal--I saw my face. Who, you ask, will kill the cat that murders the bluebird's chick? In that doomed orchard dying trees forgot how they edged toward bees, convulsed to fruit. High in the woods, beneath the hawthorns, the skirted brambles, deer the color of dying leaves turn and turn and go to sleep... It's not that it is incoherent, but it does feel like we are playing cards, and I'm trying to guess Rogers' hand as she lays down one card slowly after the other, her face inscrutable. The meaning lies in the relationship of the images to each other, but like those "magic eye" posters, you have to keep staring until the meaning comes into focus. Furthermore, Rogers is not bound by typical diction (not that any poet should be, of course). As a result, the reader is faced with phrases like I beg them back--those gone prodigals; their sweet hapless speech outvoicing resilience. Such word choice can induce both insight and head-scratching. My guess is that Rogers' appeal will largely depend on the reader and the reader's mood: read these poems without distraction and hurry, and savor the rich descriptions. Zach Hudson [..]
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