Jean Biegun’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and ekphrastic art exhibits. Her chapbook Hitchhikers to Eden was published in 2022 by Kelsay Books. Retired in California after a lifetime in the Midwest, she appreciates having found thriving, vibrant communities of poets across the country in large cities, farm regions, and university towns.
She lauds particularly those poets who champion the transformative grace of poetry through teaching it, serving as poet laureates, going into schools and prisons to lead writing groups, conducting open mics, using all their energy to spread the word that poetry is wonderful and it saves. JoAnn Anglin, Dr. Andy Jones, and Allegra Silberstein are of that blessed cadre reaching out to their whole communities.
She gratefully acknowledges that her title poem (nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2022) was inspired by Emmy Lingscheit’s exhibit Edge Effects shown at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in 2016. The product of her Arts/Industry residency in the Kohler Co. Pottery where she worked with materials and processes used to make toilets and sinks, Lingscheit’s porcelain sculptures dramatize the devastating effects experienced by wildlife living at the edge of existence (Animal Deconstruction Series).
Paperback: 44 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (May 24, 2024)