An
Air Force baby, I lived my younger years in the South—Virginia,
North Carolina, and Tennessee. Much of my work is informed by this
upbringing especially by the landscape and memory of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, folklore and folk song, the people of these
regions. Though I currently live in Minnesota, my mother’s and
husband’s home, I find myself returning to the Southern mountains,
shores, and hills in my writing, to the people of my youth, a
mental journey out of the snow and cold. After retiring in 2016
from 40 years of teaching English and writing, my work turns more
contemplative about the world, the spiritual, nature. Now able to
immerse more fully in my own writing, I turned to the Twin Cities'
community of poets and writers and even joined Facebook and
am
a Board member of Cracked
Walnut and
a
part of The
League of Minnesota Poets. I continue to work on publishing
my work, submitting to journals and literary publications but
leaning more towards working on my own poetry collections. My
degrees are a B.A. in English (James Madison University,
Harrisonburg, Virginia); an M.A. in English (University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota); and an M.F.A. in writing
(Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota), where my capstone
thesis, Sustenance, won the 2007 M.F.A. outstanding
thesis in poetry--in it, my introductory essay addresses what
sustains our lives, and then I intertwine the central thesis with
poetry and recipes from friends and family. (I also enjoy cooking,
especially Southern country and comfort foods.) Before retiring
from full-time teaching, I taught in the Shenandoah Valley and in
various schools here in the Midwest including Archbishop Brady
High School, Inver Hills Community College, the Academy of Holy
Angels, and Saint Thomas Academy. I continue to pursue part-time
teaching gigs and am a teaching artist at the Loft in Minneapolis;
I am also available for consulting, teaching, or lecture work at
literary centers and schools. Living on a pond outside of the Twin
Cities, I can watch wild turkeys, deer, and coyotes gathering for
water, where birches creak in the forest. Nature has always
informed my poetry.I am a writer of poetry, inspired by the lyrics of many bards. A product of a fantastic array of teachers and mentors, mostly from Hamline University: Deborah Keenan, Patricia Francisco Weaver, Larry Sutphin, and Jim Moore, I honed my craft and continue to do so. Support for such work comes from the Twin Cities, offering such a wonderful array of writing and arts opportunities--Margaret Hasse's readings at Art Start in St. Paul (now defunct); Rain Taxi events with Eric Lorberer; the Loft in Minneapolis; Red Bird Chapbook venues; the League of Minnesota Poets' readings and events; Literary Lights at Blue Harbor Center for the Arts in St. Paul; and the Cracked Walnut literary festivals in the spring. These people and organizations have helped me or continue to help me share my voice.
As a child, I loved nursery rhymes and the sound of language. Reading and writing were the greatest things I ever learned. Distinctly, I remember the first time I shivered after reading literature that stirred my soul and my senses--T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" and the imagery of William Hurst's short story, "The Scarlet Ibis," both come to mind. I began to pen my own verses, bad love poems though they may have been at first as well as song lyrics. In 1976, along with several pioneering college graduates, I helped to write lyrics for a musical about the Shenandoah Valley, Shenandoah Song, which played at Melrose Caverns outside of Harrisonburg, Virginia. Rich imagery and luscious sound enrich my poetry, mostly poems in the lyrical genre. The natural world, family, loss, love, death, memory, and food are likely somewhere in my work. If you peruse a bit of my poetry on this site, I hope that it somehow resonates with you or that you simply have some response to it because poetry is one of the most human things we do.
I have two published chapbooks of poetry: Tommy (Red Dragonfly Press) and Holy Comforter (Red Bird Chapbooks). Tommy is an elegiac booklet of poems about my little brother Thomas Matthew Pleasants who lost a sudden battle with cancer in his 40s. Holy Comforter, named after a grade school I attended in Charlottesville, Virginia, embraces the idea of what is indeed holy, comforting, and spiritual to me, this also being an appellation for the Holy Spirit, told from a Catholic school girl's point of view, I also explore the idea of growing up Catholic in the South. Both are available through this web site or through the respective publishers. In addition, my work has appeared in many notable journals and publications (see Published Works) including Perfect Dragonfly (Red Dragonfly Press), The Saint Paul Almanac, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. In the spring of 2018, my first full collection of poetry, Footfalls, was published by Pocahontas Press out of Blacksburg, Va. Proud of my upbringing in the Appalachian region of the U.S., this collection celebrates the people, places, and music of my childhood. This collection is available for 20.00 by contacting me via my email, donna@donnaisaacpoet.com or through pocahontaspress.com.
Click
here
to read about the Donna
Isaac Creative Writing Award.