Join us on Sunday, January 17 from 5-6 p.m. for a FLOW virtual event with award-winning Michigan writer Alison Swan reading from her new book of poetry, A Fine Canopy. FLOW’s own Dave Dempsey will ask the questions.
This Zoom event is a chance for readers new and old to get a taste of Alison’s work and enjoy an informal conversation with her about staying grounded and continuing to create during tumultuous times.
Award-winning poet Alison Swan
A book of ecopoetry, A Fine Canopy garnered this praise from environmental writer and activist Janisse Ray, “It makes sense that a terrain as extraordinary as the Great Lakes would find voice in a poet as glorious as Alison Swan. I am smitten. Swan writes with bone-deep passion, astonishing clarity, and watchful tending about life ‘at the edge of a freshwater sea.’”
Publisher’s Weekly hailed the book. “Swan carefully constructs an arc of grief and transformation through a wide range of poetic forms, including … luminous fragments…Swan offers a subtle consideration on the natural world through accomplished poetic craft.”
A Fine Canopy is Alison’s fifth book. Her poems and environmental writing have appeared in many publications, including the recent award-winning anthologies Elemental, Ghost Fishing, and Here. In 2006, Alison’s first book Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes was named a Michigan Notable Book.
Co-author of The Saugatuck Dunes: Artists Respond to a Freshwater Landscape and co-founder of Concerned Citizens for Saugatuck Dunes State Park and the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance, she has been awarded a Mesa Refuge Residency and the Michigan Environmental Council’s Petoskey Prize for Grassroots Environmental Leadership. After stints on the east and west coasts of North America, Alison settled back in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, where she teaches environmental writing at Western Michigan University.
Free registration is required for the event.
