By Elaine Rassel
Thursday evening, Oct. 14, Debra Marquart was present at the Marcus Public Library with song and poetry to the delight of the audience. This was program was made possible by a generous donation from the Lois Krekow Residuary Trust , in memory of Lois Krekow. Kay Krekow was present to speak on what this would have met for her mother.
I found her presentation very hard to write up as, how do you write on her poetry when it is spoken the way she did?! She was so good that there were times when I didn’t even have a pen in my hand it was just nice to listen to her!
She drew stories on her experience as a former road musician. When she picked up her guitar and began to sing, there was just something about the way she performed that told the audience she had been on the road at one time or another. Her guitar just seemed to follow her singing of a poetic piece.
She went to a well-worn book and pulled out a piece of poetry to read to us. It just wasn’t the usual reading, she made the piece come alive. When she spoke about (for example) an animal that had died, we could feel the emotion with its death. Other poems she read were not just words on paper, as she made us “feel” what she was reading.
She is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’ Poet Laureate. She teaches in Iowa State University’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. And, she is also Senior Editor of “Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment”.
She is an author of seven books, still continues to perform solo and with her jazz-poetry performance project. The “Bone People”, with whom she has recorded two CDs. In 2022, she has a poetry collection, “Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems” coming from New Rivers Press.
Our thanks to this program made possible in memory of Lois Krekow.