Joyce Brinkman

Joyce Brinkman's Fundraiser

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Joyce Brinkman, Indiana Poet Laureate 2002-2008, believes in poetry as public art. She creates public poetry projects involving her poetry and the poetry of others. Collaborations with visual artists using her poetry for permanent installations include her words in a twenty- five foot stained glass window by British glass artist Martin Donlin at the Indianapolis International Airport, in lighted glass by Arlon Bayliss at the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library and on a wall with local El Salvadoran artists in the town square of Quezaltepeque, El Salvador.

Her printed works include two chapbooks, "Tiempo Español", and "Nine Poems In Form Nine", and two collaborative books, "Rivers, Rails and Runways", and "Airmail from the Airpoets" with fellow "airpoets" Ruthelen Burns, Joe Heithaus, and Norbert Krapf. Joyce has received fellowships from the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and the Vermont Studio. She received a 2013 grant from the Indiana Arts Commission to explore poetry with the orangutans at the Indianapolis Zoo, and an Arts In The Park Grants from IAC for 2016 and 2017. A 2019 IAC grant supports an exhibit of prints made from her paintings. Each contains the poem she wrote that inspired it.

Her latest books include the multinational, multilingual book "Seasons of Sharing A Kasen Renku Collaboration", from Leapfrog Press and "Urban Voices: 51 Poems from 51 American Poets from San Francisco Bay Press", which she co-edited with Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda. Joyce organized the collaborative poems for the Bicentennial Legacy Book "Mapping the Muse". She recently completed a public art project in Martinsville, Indiana, featuring poetry she wrote inspired by the life and words of UCLA basketball coach and Hoosier native John Wooden. She is a graduate of Hanover College and lives in Zionsville, Indiana, with her husband and a cantankerous cat.


Your support helps me weave words as I write for thirty days this month. I think the thing that most impresses me about this press is their ingenuity. They are creative in the ways in which they engage writers, offering opportunities like the Million Line Poem and the 30/30 Projects in addition to the standard offerings of small presses. Tupelo Press always looks for ways to expand the breadth of poetry publishing. I feel that Tupelo Press has published some of the finest poets being published. I have greatly appreciated the work of Annie Finch and was please to have guidance from Carol Frost during a stay at the Vermont Studio. Ilya Kaminsky, who is being honored this year with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, is among today's most exciting additions to the poetry world.

For the 30/30 project, Tupelo Press provides the canvas, I bring my words, accompanied by other fine poets, writing thirty poems in thirty days, all ours to edit and submit as we wish. 30/30 poems have been taken by over 90 journals and featured in over 40 published chapbooks, all so Tupelo Press can keep publishing exquisite and diverse voices that might never be heard otherwise.

Every dollar gives me confidence to write more, and helps the press place more poems in gorgeous books. Help me to help this distinguished press. Give today!