Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte proud to appear at Printers Row Lit Fest
Book lovers will gather this weekend for the 41st Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago's South Loop.
The two-day event brings together 300 authors, journalists, poets, screenwriters and other literary voices for a weekend of conversations, performances, readings, book signings, and other events.
Among those reading at the festival is Mark Turcotte, the sixth Illinois Poet Laureate. Turcotte spent his youngest years on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and the migrant camps in the western U.S., and later grew up in and around Lansing, Michigan.
After what his bio calls an "unproductive" year in college, Turcotte lived and worked on the road for almost 15 years. He arrived in Chicago in the spring of 1993, and got involved in the city's poetry scene.
"Chicago was vital to me finding the best parts of myself, and really, you know, being the poet that I am today," Turcotte said. "And little did I know the first time I read at Printers Row Book Fest, Lit Fest, was in the summer of '93, and little did I know then that someday I was going to be coming back and reading a poet laureate of the state. You know, that's a pretty amazing journey."
Turcotte went on to win the First Gwendolyn Brooks Open-mic Poetry Award in the summer of 1993, and by the end of the year, he had two books of poetry set to be published. Brooks herself also selected Turcotte as a Significant Illinois Poet.
Turcotte moved to Door County, Wisconsin, in 1998, and earned an MFA in creative writing at Western Michigan University. After residencies around the country, he returned to Chicago in 2009 and became senior lecturer and distinguished writer-in-residence in the English Department and DePaul University.
Turcotte said his poetry tends toward the deeply personal, and in particular his Native experience. On CBS News Chicago Thursday morning, he read part of "Flies Buzzing," a poem about being a kid on the reservation:
As a child I danced
to the heartful, savage
rhythm
of the Native, the
American Indian,
in the Turtle Mountains,
in the Round Hall,
in the greasy light of
kerosene lamps.
As a child I danced
among the long, jangle legs of
the men, down
beside the whispering moccasin women,
in close circles
around the Old Ones,
who sat at the drum,
their heads tossed, backs arched
in ancient prayer.
At the Printers Row Lit Fest this weekend, Turcotte will appear with Chicago Poet Laureate Mayda Del Valle for the poetry reading and discussion "Two Paths, Many Stories." They will be on the Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage, on Polk Street just east of Clark Street, at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
