Letter from the President

Hello, Poetry Friends! I want to introduce myself and tell you about current activities and plans at SDSPS, which your memberships help support.

I was elected President of SDSPS to a three-year term at the 2023 annual meeting. I’m recently retired from a 25+-year teaching career at the University of South Dakota, where I taught literature, composition, and creative writing, and where, for many of those years, I directed the student creative writing and literary organization, the Vermillion Literary Project (VLP). I have three books of poetry, Finger Bones and Other Relics (self-published), The Book of Crooked Prayer (Finishing Line Press), and The Sea is My Ugly Twin (Finishing Line Press). You can find out more at https://www.marcellaremund.com.

I’m delighted to serve SDSPS and poetry in our state, and I’m especially excited right now about Poetry on the Road, a project the Society launched at the South Dakota Festival of Books back in September, 2023. Poetry on the Road is bringing poetry to 16 South Dakota communities. Each event features readings by South Dakota’s Poet Laureate Bruce Roseland and other SDSPS member poets, and an open mic, where anyone can sign up to read their own poems. We’ve held six of these events so far, and the response has been overwhelming! We’re happy to be spreading the word about the Society, and at each event, we’re being treated to an incredible variety of poetic voices from across our state—poets being heard for the first time, established poets, and young student poets.

We’re busy working on some wonderful plans for the coming year, including continuing updates to our website, work with the City of Brookings on a poetry/art project, and developing a relationship with South Dakota’s branch of the national student organization, Poetry Out Loud. We’re also working with the Sioux Falls Community Foundation as we manage your generous donations and support and continue to grow SDSPS. And we’re already receiving requests for return visits of Poetry on the Road!

So we hope you’ll bookmark this page and return often to check out our updates. There are some new writer’s groups listed in our Writer’s Resources page, and you can now buy Poetry on the Road t-shirts on our SHOP page. For our Poetry on the Road schedule and more info, you can visit https://sdpoetry.org/poetry-on-the-road/.  And if you’re a poet, we hope you’ll join us when/where you can, and that YOU will sign up to read your poems, too!

Poetically Yours,

Marcella Remund, President

South Dakota State Poetry Society