Owen, Maureen 1943-

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Owen, Maureen 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born July 7, 1943, in Graceville, MN; daughter of DeLoris Tracy; married Ted Mankovich, December, 1976; divorced; children: Ulysses, Patrick, Kyran. Ethnicity: "Irish." Education: Studied at Seattle University, 1962-63, and San Francisco State University, 1963-65. Politics: "Peace."

ADDRESSES:

Home—Denver, CO. Office—Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO 80302. E-mail—pomowen@ix.netcom.com.

CAREER:

Poet and writing instructor. St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, New York, NY, administrative assistant of the Poetry Project, 1973-76, coordinator/director of the Poetry Project, 1976-80, program coordinator of the Poetry Project, 2001-03; freelance creative writing and book production workshop leader, 1980—; Inland Book Company, East Haven, CT, catalog manager, 1982-96; Morton Publishing Company, Branford, CT and Englewood, CO, senior editor of series publications, 1996-2000; Naropa University, Boulder, CO, summer writing program faculty member, 1998, 2001, 2003-06, adjunct professor, 2003—; Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, honors examiner in English literature, 1999, 2002; Edinboro University, Edinboro, PA, creative writing/composition faculty member, 1999; LPC Group, managing editor of In-House Press, 2000-01. National Endowment for the Arts writing fellow in poetry, 1980-81; tai chi instructor.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Before Columbus American Book Award, 1985, for poetry, for AE (Amelia Earhart).

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Country Rush, Adventures in Poetry Press (New York, NY), 1973.

No Travels Journal, Cherry Valley Editions (Cherry Valley, NY), 1975.

Hearts in Space, drawings by Joe Giordano, Kulchur Foundation (New York, NY), 1980.

AE (Amelia Earhart,) Vortex Editions (San Francisco, CA), 1984.

Zombie Notes, SUN (New York, NY), 1985.

Imaginary Income, Hanging Loose Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Untapped Maps, Potes & Poets Press (Elmwood, CT), 1993.

American Rush: Selected Poems, Talisman House (Jersey City, NJ), 1998.

Erosion's Pull, Coffee House Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2006.

Contributor of poetry to numerous anthologies. Editor of Telephone Magazine, 1970-2003, and Not Enough Night, 2003—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Maureen Owen is an American poet and writing instructor. Owen has taught writing workshops since 1970, applying her own advice to the opus of poetry books she has published since the early 1970s. Owen often takes a serene, spiritual approach to her poetry and has forged a professional relationship with the Naropa Institute since the late 1990s. Owen served as the editor of Telephone magazine from 1970 to 2003 and has a long working relationship with the St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Poetry Project.

Imaginary Income was published in 1992. The poems in this book use imagery to project the mood and sense of the poem to the reader. Owen makes commentary on the situation of our planet and society at large throughout the collection. A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote that "the risks these poems take merit scrutiny." The same reviewer added that the poems are loaded with "kinetic language and provocative lines."

In 1999 Owen published American Rush: Selected Poems, which is a selected compilation of her poems published during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Chris Tysh, writing in Detroit's Metro Times, described the book's collection of poetry as "Zen." Tysh remarked that the book "traffics in complicated and ever-changing issues having to do with gender and writing." Tysh concluded of Owen that "hers is a tongue, edged with drive and boldness of movement, which not only redesigns the shifting margins of modern poetry but demands we ‘construct a route of passion’ and stand up for the possibility of song."

Maureen Owen told CA: "Consciousness is a collage. Everyday reality has come to be composed of bits and snippets and shreds and shards, complicated fragments that are part of an even more complicated environs. Information bursts upon us, scattering thin chips of data. Our knowledge is a bizarre composite of science, family, advertisement, movie star gossip, junk mail, sports scores, articles from newspapers & zines, books, diet hysteria, media sensationalism, political spin, and stock market frenzy. In my work I focus on this fracturing. Narratives of verbal collage submerge and surface as little rivers that run through the poem.

"Reading Scientific American one afternoon, I came across an article on how erosion builds mountains. Since the ultimate limiting force to mountain growth is gravity, erosion, by reducing the weight of the mountain, actually accelerates the process of growth by pulling crust from below the mountain up toward the surface. I immediately saw this as an analogy with human growth. As a person travels through life, the difficulties of circumstance and fate erode ones initial robust exterior and attachment to material illusions. This wearing away causes one to become lighter, more spiritual, less attached, and this allows an inner power to draw up from the earth into one's being.

"This manuscript is about the contemporary and being in its myriad beauty and bombardment. It's about surviving and staying sane in a time of political affront on liberty and peace. It's about being empowered as a person in a still sexist world. It's about being mindful and maintaining honesty, love, humor, and enthusiasm. It's about not being marginalized."