Biography:
Carol Willette Bachofner, MFA Vermont College of Fine Arts 2004, is poet, blogger, watercolorist, and photographer. She has published five books of poetry, most recently Test Pattern, a Fantod of Prose Poems (2018) and The Boyfriend Project (2017) Her poems have appeared in the anthology, Dawnland Voices, an Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (2014). She was a finalist in the Maine Literary Awards for 2011 and won the Maine Postmark Contest 2017 for her poem, Passagassawaukeag, which was published in The Maine Review. Her photo, Rigged, received Honorable Mention in the Spirit of Place contest by Maine Media workshop and is printed in the contest anthology. She served as Poet Laureate of Rockland Maine from 2012-2016.
Biography alternatives:
It seems appropriate also to have a bio in poetic form.
This appears on the back inside flap of my 3rd book I Write in the Greenhouse:
It was raining in my dreams,
and I opened my mouth like a baby
bird to be fed by abundance, washed
as if in baptism. It rained, and I cried out.
(from the poem, Baptism)
As a poet of Abenaki origin, I created a bio that reflects who I am as an indigenous person.
This autobiographical poem comes from my 4th book, Native Moons, Native Days:
Winter Bringer:
my name in tribal language, the moon bringing
winter, bringing me. Ice hangs outside
the delivery room windows, pkwamiak,*
like teeth from an old smile, like drips of cream
down the sides of the bowl where gingerbread
soaks up five-hundred-year old snow.
* Abenaki for icicles
Visit My Blog and "follow" me
I love to share. I love to talk. The way to do that digitally is to blog. In my blog, I discuss poetry and issues about writing and reading. I also (somewhat randomly) comment on whatever is going on in the world that captures my attention.
What will you find there other than my chatter?
book recommendations
links to other blogs by writers
photographs and art
comments on the state of writing
prompts and samples of poems
Don't you just want to check it out?
Project-in-Progress, author's note:
I am at work on a book of conversations with the poems of Richard Wilbur (1921-2017). I have been fascinated with (obsessed by?) Wilbur's poetry since 2002. I believe him to be perhaps the greatest poet the United States has been privileged to call its own.
Twice Pulitzer winner, former US Poet Laureate, Wilbur had a touch for writing unequaled by any other. His work is my teacher. I got the idea, since not much has been written about his work, and almost nothing about him as poet, that I could write in such a way as to demonstrate his work's mentoring of my own poetry. I call these my conversations with Wilbur's poems.
He agreed to a face-to-face interview and I went to see him at his home studio. Best of all, I got his blessing on my project.
I hope the book will be finished in a year or two. I work a little on it most every day. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: still slogging away at it. Slow going. Unfortunately Wilbur has passed away and will not get to see the finished book, though he gave my work a heartfelt approval. I treasure the encouraging postcards he sent me.
Me with the late Richard Wilbur, 2013. Photograph taken during a personal interview I did with him in his home studio.
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