Nome Poems

Ken Waldman has traveled the American West for over a decade, reading and performing at hundreds of venues as varied as his talents: schools, coffeehouses, bookstores, theaters, festivals, and bars. When off the road, he's lived in Fairbanks, Juneau, Sitka, Nome, and Anchorage. A former college professor, he frequently travels to Native villages and rural communities where he shares his writing and music with students. The poet Naomi Shebab Nye has said, "He spreads the cheer of genuine work."

The prolific performer has produced twenty-six chapbooks, a music and poetry tape cassette, Christmas cards, postcards, and bookmarks of his poems. He has published 250 poems and stories in journals, magazines, and newspapers, while appearing at literary events ranging from the Associated Writing Programs conferences to the annual Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle.

Nome Poems is his first full volume of poetry. It reflects on his residence in Nome, his relations with the citizens of this frontier town, his role as a musician and schoolteacher, his internal exile realized during a hospital stay in Seattle, his plane crash into a snowbank that almost cost him his life, and his recovery and final perspective:

. . . . Nome,/a friend says to approach you/as one does a bear trap--and pass./Another calls you the dark wound./Myself, long-caught in nether worlds/of the devil's doing, I escape/by writing you, inhabiting you,/trashing you, releasing you.