Keeping It All Afloat

Ingrid Wendt's poems vibrate with a pulse for our endurance: a sensory poet's innate negative capability. Wendt shines her language on classic verities of truth and beauty while still bearing witness to horror and grief. Sometimes the poet is at "the wet, level edge of the world." With understated playfulness, she takes us into the Yucatán jungle's pyrotechnics of berries and leaves. Starburst recognitions! Her precision and observation reveal hidden miracles.

-Anne Waldman, author of Mesopotopia

With tenderness and awe, Wendt's poems recreate the splendor of a tropical jungle on the Yucatán coast. Wendt captures the cacophony (and mating!) of birds, the chirping of nearly transparent lizards, and the dazzling fish in undersea hush. She brings a moral reverence, with poem after poem presenting the complex balance of human interaction with the natural world. This is a profound and memorable work!

-Barbara Ras, author of The Blues of Heaven

Ingrid Wendt was born and raised in Aurora, Illinois, of first and second-generation immigrant parents. Chosen by William Stafford, her first book of poems, Moving the House, a title both literal and figurative, appeared in BOA Editions' New Poets of America Series. Her next three books won the Oregon Book Award, the Yellowglen Award, and the Editions Prize. Co-editor of the Oregon poetry anthology From Here We Speak and of the anthology In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts, Wendt has been a visiting writer for over 30 years, at all educational levels, including the MFA program of Antioch, Los Angeles, and as a three-time Fulbright Professor in Germany. A popular workshop presenter and keynote speaker, at home and abroad, her book of poetry prompts-Starting with Little Things: A Guide to Writing Poetry in the Classroom-is now in its sixth printing. A classical pianist, organist, and choral singer by training and avocation, Wendt's work has three times been featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, turned into choral and instrumental music, and translated into German, Italian, and Spanish. Her many honors include the Distinguished Achievement Award from the president of her alma mater, Cornell College; induction into the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame; fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and Literary Arts; several Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations; and residencies from the Kulturreferat München, the Wurlitzer Foundation, the Bellagio/Rockefeller Foundation, Hedgebrook, Playa, and more. Since the publication of her last book, Evensong, poems have appeared in POETRY, American Poetry Review, Terrain, About Place, CALYX, Cutthroat, among others, and received an honorable mention in both the 2025 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize in Poetry, judged by Alicia Ostriker, and the 2025 River Heron Editors' Prize. Married for 48 years to the late poet and writer Ralph Salisbury, she lives in Eugene, Oregon, sings and travels with the Eugene Concert Choir (most recently in Berlin, Germany), and volunteers as an exhibit interpreter at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.