Laura Winter

Laura Winter was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and currently lives in Portland, Oregon. The western landscape with all its hoo doos, headlands, basin and range, whitewater and rain are the foundation from which she works. Winter's love for improvised music also informs how she approaches using the English language. Improvised music structures — soundscapes and silences — create an interesting tension between sound, words and silence in the landscape of her imagist poetry.

Winter's poetry collections include: Coming Here to be Alone (2007), sleeping leaves (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2002), not gone/just not here (2001), No Gravy Baby (unnum Press, 2000), skin into dust (26 Books, 1994), and STONE FOG (Membrane Press, 1987), of which she is the co-author.

Winter has been widely published and her work has appeared in numerous periodicals, including A Change in Weather: Anthology of Midwest Women Poets, High/Coo, Boom, Cream City Review, Anemone, Poetic Space, Portland Review, Mr. Cogito, Z Miscellaneous, Perceptions, Pointed Circle, Fireweed, Portlander, Plazm, Rain City Review, Talus And Scree, Northwest Literary Forum, Portlandia Review of Books, Hummingbird, The Temple, The Oregonian, and Origin.

Her poems have been used as liner notes for CDs and set to music by composers. She appears on educational interactive software, Writing for Readers by Pierian Spring Software.

Winter currently publishes TAKE OUT, a bag-a-zine of art, writing and music that features powerful voices from around the globe. Some of her poetry and music projects include work with musicians Vinny Golia, Torsten Mueller, Garth Powell, Rob Blakeslee, Billy Mintz, and Michael Bisio. She has been the guest of honor for the SilentArt Festival 2007 in Bochum, Germany. Coming Here to be Alone is a bi-lingual book featuring the poems written in English and the translations in German.

Crows can fool you

from Satyricon Poetry Series, December 12th, 1984

from Satyricon Poetry Series, November 13th, 1985

Mingus fingers spring

October

whorehouse meadow