Dunkelberg to Publish Poetry Collection

Local poet, Kendall Dunkelberg, will publish his third collection, titled Barrier Island Suite. The poems tell the story of Mississippi artist Walter Inglis Anderson as seen through his logs and his artwork.

A well-known artist working in water color, charcoal, pen and ink, sculpture, and murals, Anderson lived in Ocean Springs, where he designed and decorated ceramics at the family’s Shearwater Pottery and weeks at a time camped out on Horn Island and the other barrier islands, observing, drawing, and painting the local plants, animals, and birds, and chronicling his experiences in copious logs.

Early in life, Anderson had suffered from depression and had been institutionalized. He had studied at art school and traveled to France, Spain, Central America, Japan, and China. The poems in this collection explore Anderson’s unique artistic vision and the liminal space that he inhabited between land and sea, between nature and culture, and between madness and conformity.

Dunkelberg is professor of English at Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, Miss., where he directs the low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing and the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium.

He has published two previous books of poetry, Landscapes and Architectures, and Time Capsules, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including China Grove, Poetry South and Valley Voices, and in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume II: Mississippi and Down to the Dark River.

Barrier Island Suite will be available in March from Texas Review Press and may be preordered at most bookstores or through the Texas Book Consortium, tamupress.org. More information is available on the author’s website, kendalldunkelberg.com.

Contact: Dr. Kendall Dunkelberg
Mississippi University for Women
Dept. of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy
1100 College St., P.O. Box MUW-1634
Columbus MS 39701
662-329-7169, fax 662-329-7387
kadunkelberg@muw.edu