sheila packa

poetry / spoken word

poetry

loom

sheila packa

	
	When I was a girl, my mother 
	tore suits and dresses into strips
	and wound them up into balls. 
	Wool and cotton, silks and satins, 
	dark rainbows that couldn't be clouded
	by the dust that rose in that destruction,
	geological hues tied with a zeal,
	the cat chased those tails endlessly.
	When all this was done,
	my mother descended with her baskets
	to the loom in the basement,
	that big creaking frame
	threaded with string sunsets and 
	daybreak brilliance, with foot pedals
	bigger than a piano's and rhythms
	that were like shifts in the heart
	or quakes underground.
	She threw the shuttle and pounded the bar
	against the rags of the past
	so rugs came reeling out, 
	all warp and weft and her breathless.
	Even now I feel her rhythms
	in the everyday disasters,
	feel the need to tear my clothes, get down
	to the most basic elements.
	I want to - somehow in the heartbeat
	of the dark and in the lap of great effort - 
	take the threads of the past
	and bring up something new.

the mother tongue: sheila packa (2007)

$18.95 (includes shipping)

collected poems published by calyx press

Anyone who has ever visited Northern Minnesota can identify with the expert metaphors and beautiful repetition of sounds of The Mother Tongue. The collection is divided into three sections, The Mother Tongue--narrative poems about her youth; Torrent--erotic love poems clearly influenced by the poet's past and homeland; and Fluency--narrative poems about finding love, both romantic and platonic. Describing herself as a "daughter of love," Sheila Packa transcribes her experiences coming of age and finding love in Minnesota's rural mining community. Packa sees herself as part of her surroundings toiling deep in the heart of an iron mine, professing her love to her Iron Range boyfriend, taking a dip in the rust-colored "Wine Lake." And yet, struggles with her Finnish heritage give her poetry the emotional distance needed for a foreign reader. As she comes to understand the cultural differences which create a barrier between her and her mother, she writes, "We must go to make new/ love and let the past go." At the same time, her poetry celebrates the past, her heritage, and the North, which provides "the iron in our veins." Packa has received two Arrowhead Regional Arts Council fellowships for poetry and two Loft McKnight Awards. -Elizabeth Bance
Minnesota Literature Newsletter

The Fiction/Poetry/Drama reading group loved this beautiful collection of poems. This 3-part collection includes 28 erotic poems, which sweep the reader up by surprise, interspersed with Packa's reflections about growing up as the daughter of a Finnish mother while living in the economically stressed region of the Iron Range. While these are personal explorations of identity and mother/daughter relationships, the reader travels along easily and willingly for the bumpy ride.
- Reading committee for the Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards (2008 Honorable Mention for The Mother Tongue)