Brainerd Writers Alliance Contest Winners and Judges 2018 (Laura: Poetry, 2nd Place)




Reviews:

From www.danielledufy.com blog; a review of Deja Vu

Early April brought me back to Laura L. Hansen’s Déjà Vu, a slim but weighty volume which I bought before Christmas, when the poet signed books at our local arts center. At the time, I could only page through the collection; but I knew I’d come back in earnest when I could give it more attention.
From the opening poem, “Déjà vu,” through “The Truth Upon Waking,” “Her Body,” “The Mythology of Loneliness,” “A Cup of Sky,” and “Mitosis” (to name only a handful of favorites), to the closing poem, “Desire at 60,” I found Hansen’s poetry at once sating and stimulating, each poem like a bite of rich chocolate dessert—it completely satisfies but also sets you yearning for the next bite.
The poems I like best in Déjà Vu look inward, even as they reach out toward the reader, occasionally in spite of themselves (“Sometimes I Pray That You Won’t Talk to Me”); they are introverts, these poems, perfectly fine with their own company yet longing to be heard and appreciated. There is beauty in every poem, whether the subject be mundane or elevated, dark (“Testimony”) or pulsing with light (“Mitosis”); they are well-wrought with exquisite language that can stun or stifle (and more!) to appropriate effect. And flowing through it all is the river of Hansen’s awareness, so keen the reader just knows she is in excellent hands. 

“I could be all day praising this fine [] volume.” … “Déjà Vu contains poems of a quiet life, which is not to say nothing happens in them. These poems are full of careful observation, of the beauties and terrors of nature and human life. They also contain lost love, the perils and consolations of memory, the process of aging, some splendid midwestern thunderstorms, and at least one murder. They bring the reader inside the intense mind-world of those to whom “the sacred comes to us/in our solitude, in the brush of tree bark/under our hands, in the soft way the sun/cups the star-studded Potentilla/in the fast food parking lot. /Yes. Even there.” – Edith Rylander, Columnist, Essayist and Poet, Dance with the Darker Sister, Wrestling with the Angel, Hive Dancer

"This latest group of Laura Hansen's poems, 'Deja Vu,' continues with a sustained embrace of nature in which she searches out the metaphysical much as Emily Dickinson did, looking intensely for answers to life in the trees, sky, grass, rivers, birds, people and herself. The poems delve much deeper than ever before into questions which are almost unanswerable. Her poems offer revelations both for the author and the reader. 'Deja Vu' is an illuminating journey well worth taking." – Tom McKeown, Poet

I have been sipping this collection of poems, slowly, so as to taste them. I love the quiet of some, the turbulence of others, the shimmer they exude, but feel inadequate to speak fluently to and about such work save that it satisfies my appetite for beauty. – Beryl Singleton Bissell on Deja Vu
Beryl is the award-winning author of The Scent of God and A View of the Lake. www.berylsingletonbissell.com

Laura Hansen’s poems (Midnight River) leave one with images of loss—a bumpy sidewalk outside a mother’s nursing home, a pool cue like a fallen branch next to the cue ball, a little cousin drawn by a voice into the watery depths of a quarry. But Hansen finds strength in the things that wound her: “What holds me together is the weight / of the attic with its burden / of ladies’ hats and boxes of too-wide ties.” In that attic is her heritage. There’s balm in these poems. Cedar waxwings eating over-wintered berries in a tree give to the watcher “the gift of belief,” and when Hansen describes the grooming motions of rabbits, she could be talking about the healing power of poetry itself: “Each movement slow and measured, / each caress a lesson in how to take care / of ourselves, how to show ourselves / love like nothing else can.”   - Donna Salli, author of A Notion of Pelicans

Awards:

Talking Stick Literary Journal 2020 Writing Contest, Poetry, First Place, The Parting Song

Brainerd Writers Alliance 2018 Contest, Poetry, 2nd Place, Deception and Disguise

League of Minnesota Poets Contest 2018 - Woodtick Poets Award, First Place - The Night Drop

Midwest Book Awards 2017 - Poetry, Finalist - Midnight River

Brainerd Writers Alliance Writing Contest 2016 - Poetry; First Place, These are the Places We Encountered Each Other

Five Wings Arts Council - 2016 Community Arts Leadership Award

Great River Arts featured Retail Visual Artist of the Month - February 2016

Poetry On the Wall 2015 Exhibit 2015 -2nd Place - Munitions

Poetry On the Wall 2014 Exhibit - 3rd Place - Devouring the Moon

League of MN Poets  Contest 2013 - Grand Prize, First Place - Show Me How to Survive

Poetry on the Wall Exhibit 2013 - People’s Choice Award - Dear Postmaster

Great River Arts Association Artist of the Month - August 2010

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