Margaret LeMay – sample.spring

Margaret LeMay will read from her new poetry chapbook, sample.spring. Prairie Lights owner and poet Jan Weissmiller says this about sample.spring: “In these spare, acutely observant poems, Margaret LeMay describes the stress of living in a world so endangered it is hard to explain to a child. Her internal dialogue, with its syntax of sadness, is perfectly placed. The way the natural world enters this dialogue is imagistically exact and exacting. The poet’s perception expresses an existential truth that both clarifies and transcends narrative. Here beauty enters the dark consciousness as opposition, but its very existence offers a glimmer of salvation. The voice-driven precision of this collection is in pursuit of a complex truth. This is an astonishing debut.” Margaret LeMay teaches creative writing. Her poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, the Asian Pacific American Journal, Better, The Cortland Review, Little Village, and elsewhere. Her work has served as title and six movement subtitles for a piano quintet commissioned by and performed at the Library of Congress, and it appears in the Telepoem Booth, a multi-state installation art project. It has been shortlisted for the 92Y Discovery award and the Four Way Books Levis prize. Margaret’s courses focus on poetry and short forms. She is also a faculty co-director for the Coe College Center for Health & Society.