News Release: Writer and poet Bill Holm receives 11th annual McKnight Distinguished Artist Award
May 12, 2008 - Poet and essayist has impacted the arts in Minnesota for more than 30 years.
May 12, 2008, Minneapolis - The McKnight Foundation has named Minnesota author Bill Holm as the 2008 McKnight Distinguished Artist, in recognition of artistic excellence spanning more than three decades. The annual honor, now in its 11th year, includes a $50,000 cash award and recognizes individual Minnesota artists who have made significant contributions to the quality of the state's cultural life. The 2008 selection committee for the award includes Philip Bither, Emilie Buchwald, Graydon Royce, Stewart Turnquist, and Dale Warland. With the award, McKnight published a commemorative book featuring essays about Holm's influence as a poet and essayist, a chronology of his work and life, and original photographs.
"Bill Holm's straightforward storytelling may seem to belie the complexity of his art," says Erika L. Binger, board chair of The McKnight Foundation, "but in reality, it underscores it. At once a poet, an essayist, and a musician, Bill is a self-proclaimed outsider who comfortably invites readers and listeners into his world. As an artist, he is every bit as multilayered as the world on which he reports. Since he first started teaching at White Bear Lake's Lakewood Community College in 1976, Bill has enriched our state as both an artist and a teacher." Among Holm's awards, he was named a Bush Foundation Arts Fellow in 1982 and 1995, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in 1987. He received Minnesota Book Awards in 1991 and 1997; the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik's Cobb Award in 2003 for service to Iceland; and an honorary doctorate from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, in 2002.
Having first published Holm's poetry at Milkweed Editions in 1985, editor and McKnight Distinguished Artist Emilie Buchwald (2002) has said that she has "had the joy of knowing and working with a protean American radical in the tradition of Thoreau and Whitman." Longtime collaborator Milkweed Editions of Minneapolis has published seven collections of Holm's poetry and essays, including Coming Home Crazy, Eccentric Islands, and Playing the Black Piano. In addition to his writing, Holm is also well-regarded for his music talents vocally and on the keyboard.
"Bill approaches each new project with both a clear sense of where he is going and a genuine openness to collaboration," said Daniel Slager, publisher and CEO of Milkweed Editions. "In contrast with most writers these days, Bill seems to have an aversion to computers, which means — to my great pleasure — that he generally comes in to the office with reams of paper, covered with his inimitable script. We sit down and talk first about the state of the world, then about the state of whichever manuscript is in process, and then we usually go out to lunch. I'm always sorry to see him jet off to Iceland in the summer."
Born in Minneota, Minnesota, in 1943, Holm is the grandson of four Icelandic immigrants. He still spends most of the year in Minneota, where he recently retired after teaching Literature and Creative Writing for 27 years at Southwest Minnesota State University. Holm proudly shares his immigrant ancestors' passion for poetry, music, and nature. He spends his summers in Iceland, where since 1998 he has owned a fisherman's cottage in the village of Brimnes — brim meaning waves or surf in Icelandic, and nes meaning cape.
In 1979 and 1980, Holm was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature at the University of Iceland in Rekjavik. From 1986 to 1987, he was a lecturer in American and British Literature at Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, Shaanxi, P.R. China, which created the context for his collection of essays Coming Home Crazy. In addition to traditional teaching, Holm has mentored countless students, helped writers find publishers, and helped introduce the works of Minnesota authors to the rest of the country. Minnesota author Carol Bly, who passed away in 2007, once said she appreciated his "modeling of intensely felt enjoyment of other people's work to students and listeners."
The author of 10 books of both poetry and essays, Holm's most recent prose book is The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland (Milkweed Editions, 2007). Written from his cottage next to a fjord on the coast of Iceland, the book reflects on the state of the United States and things the U.S. could learn from his family's homeland. The Windows of Brimnes was named among the Star Tribune's top titles of 2007. Topics of previous works range from American politics and culture to more esoteric explorations of life, humanity, and beauty.
From heart-tugging poetry to biting essays, Holm's pieces are admired for their wit, clarity, use of language, and sense of history. Humorist and radio personality Garrison Keillor has called Holm a "truthful and graceful writer." Holm's stories embrace both the marvelous and the mundane, artfully grounding incendiary contemporary issues like globalization and commercialization in common sense realities. According to Keillor, "Mr. Holm is a sort of ice man... we excavate him and we're able to study him and see what authors used to be like."
Of his work, the Los Angeles Times has said, "A reader sinks almost immediately into the hands of a master storyteller, a true rambler." Known for being a comedically irascible (yet wholly earnest) presenter, he does not own a television set, and says he has never turned on a computer. Holm — who rails against canned music, bad TV, warmongering, and political elections — will serve as a contributing reporter for Minnesota Law and Politics during the 2008 National Republican Convention in St. Paul.
Holm, whose last name means "island" in Old Norse, has described the United States as "too big, too noisy, too populated, too frenzied ... for me to see anything but a vast cloud of human white noise." Nonetheless, he readily participates in community life in both Minneota and Iceland, traveling often and inviting guests to visit and listen to his stories, and to tell their own. A wandering poet at heart, Holm gives readings to community groups, nursing homes, community centers, colleges, and libraries.
Holm graduated in 1965 from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, with a B.A. in English. In 1967, he earned his master's degree in English from the University of Kansas.
ABOUT THE MCKNIGHT DISTINGUISHED ARTIST AWARD
The McKnight Distinguished Artist Award recognizes individuals who helped lay the foundation for Minnesota's rich cultural life. Despite opportunities to pursue their work elsewhere, they chose to stay — and by staying, they have made a difference. Previous recipients are composer Dominick Argento (1998), ceramic artist Warren MacKenzie (1999), writer Robert Bly (2000), choral conductor Dale Warland (2001), publisher Emilie Buchwald (2002), painter Mike Lynch (2003), orchestra conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (2004), sculptor Judy Onofrio (2005), theater artist Lou Bellamy (2006), and sculptor Kinji Akagawa (2007).
The McKnight Foundation will honor Holm at a private dinner later this year.
NOTE TO EDITORS AND PRODUCERS
High-resolution photos of Holm may be obtained by calling the Foundation at 612-333-4220. To arrange for interviews with Holm or McKnight staff, please call Tim Hanrahan at the Foundation.
ABOUT THE MCKNIGHT FOUNDATION
The McKnight Foundation seeks to improve the quality of life for present and future generations through grantmaking, coalition-building, and encouragement of strategic policy reform. Founded in 1953 and independently endowed by William and Maude McKnight, the Minnesota-based Foundation had assets of approximately $2.3 billion and granted about $93 million in 2007.
Contact information
Tim Hanrahan, Communications Director, 612-333-4220