Louis Jenkins (poet)


Louis Burke Jenkins was an American prose poet. He lived in Duluth, Minnesota, with his wife Ann for over four decades, beginning in 1971. He also lived in Bloomington, Minnesota. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Jenkins was a guest on A Prairie Home Companion numerous times and was also featured on The Writer's Almanac and on the Northern Lights TV Series.
WWW louisjenkins.com

Personal life

Louis Burke Jenkins was born October 28, 1942, in Enid, Oklahoma, to Burke Jenkins and Genevieve. He attended Wichita State University from 1967 to 1969. Jenkins married Sandra Brashear in 1963, divorcing in 1968, and then married the painter and professional librarian Ann Jacobson in 1970, relocating to Minnesota in 1971. He has a son named Lars.
Jenkins died at his home in Bloomington on December 21, 2019, at age 77.

Literary awards and honors

Louis Jenkins’ book, Nice Fish, was winner of the Minnesota Book Award in 1995, and his book Just Above Water won the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award in 1997. Jenkins was a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 1996 and at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in England in 2007. He was a Bush Foundation Fellow in 1979 and 1984. He also was honored with the George Morrison award and Loft-McKnight Fellowship.

Acting and ''Nice Fish'' with Mark Rylance

Jenkins appeared in the minor role of Earl in the 2016 film Blood Stripe and as a therapist in the 1964 film Lilith. Actor Mark Rylance recited works by Jenkins in lieu of formal acceptance speeches after winning a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for the play Boeing-Boeing in 2008 and again after winning his Tony Award for the play Jerusalem in 2011. During 2008-2013 Rylance transformed a sequence of Jenkins’ prose poems into the play Nice Fish which premiered on April 6, 2013, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. A revised production of the play opened at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 17, 2016. During the Cambridge run of Nice Fish Jenkins played the role of Wayne, a kind of Old Man Winter figure in the revised version of the play.

''The Mad Moonlight'' Art Song Project

In 2020 and 2021, the Schubert Club of Saint Paul, with funding from friends and admirers of Louis Jenkins, commissioned 14 Minnesota composers to set for voice and piano 57 of the 62 poems in The Mad Moonlight, the last collection of his poems published during his lifetime, as a memorial tribute. The composers selected were Carol E. Barnett, Craig Carnahan, Jake Endres, Jocelyn Hagen and Tim Takach, Linda Tutas Haugen, Ryan Johnston, Linda Kachelmeier, Libby Larsen, J. David Moore, Daniel Nass, Jonathan Posthuma, David Evan Thomas, and Jeremy Walker . The resulting art songs were premiered at Schubert Club concerts in Saint Paul, Minnesota, starting in 2021, with the final premiere taking place at a recital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on August 7, 2023. The Project was also awarded the 2023 by the Festival.

Selected readings, interviews, and performance videos

Prose Poems
in Duluth, MN, introduced by Robert Bly.
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, introduced by Michael Dennis Browne.
on a 2013 broadcast of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”
at The Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ.
at the 2008 Tony Awards Ceremony in New York City.
at the 2011 Tony Awards Ceremony in New York City.
Nice Fish
on the Guthrie Theater premiere production of "Nice Fish".
on their production of "Nice Fish".
The Mad Moonlight Art Songs
;
;
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; recorded at the College of St. Scholastica’s Mitchell Auditorium in Duluth, MN, on September 15, 2023, performed by mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and pianist Jessica Schroeder.

Selected bibliography

Books

  • Collected Poems
  • The Mad Moonlight: Poems
  • Where Your House Is Now: New and Selected Prose Poems
  • In the Sun Out of the Wind
  • Tin Flag: New and Selected Poems
  • Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005
  • European Shoes
  • North of the Cities
  • Four Places on Lake Superior’s North Shore
  • Distance From the Sun
  • Sea Smoke
  • The Winter Road
  • Just Above Water
  • Nice Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems
  • All Tangled Up With the Living
  • An Almost Human Gesture
  • Will Small: The Journey
  • The Water's Easy Reach:Prose Poems
  • ''The Well Digger's Wife''

Anthologies

Audio recordings

  • ''Any Way in the World''

Plays