Kelly Writers House Fellows 2019: Berssenbrugge: March 25-26

The Heat Bird, Berssenbrugger draws on the landscapes of Northern Mexico and Alaska. considers her family's origins in a broader context of relationship to place.

These poems evoke the New Mexican desert, the Alaskan tundra, and Berssenbrugge’s Chinese home.

This work was Mei-mei's second collaboration with Richard Tuttle. The book consists of six long poems all with several numbered stanzas: ideal, size, combustion, sphericity, experience and value.

"Endocrinology" incorporates Berssenbrugge's words in both typographic and handwritten form with Kiki Smith's drawings.

In this collection Berssenbrugge considers the human presence in the world. "Four Year Old Girl won the 1998 Western States Book Award.

"I walk every day from the mesa where I live in New Mexico, and I may notice a plant because of its beautiful seedpods or the way it shines out with the light behind it. The plant is calling me. I begin to think about this plant, and I walk by it several times. I sit next to it. I try to open my heart to the plant. The dry streambed becomes quiet and more vivid. I can hear a bird's wings through the air. I try to feel the embeddedness of all living things with each other, and I try to catch the words that are passing through my mind, and as days pass, I realize they come from my plant. I've read that plants are compassionate, and that they are connected by vast mycelial networks underground and by the exquisite receptivity and responsiveness of their chemistries." From "Mei-mei Berssenbrugge on 'Hello, the Roses'" at Poetry Society of America