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A Poet's Labor Bears Fruit

February 26, 2016 by Alexandra Gilliam

Blood Work, a prize-winning collection of poems by literature and creative writing faculty member Matthew Siegel, will be published this spring. In a recent San Francisco Chronicle profile, Siegel called the volume the natural outgrowth of a long and consistent effort. “You produce poems like a tree produces fruit, or something. It’s just something that you do. And sometimes the fruit is good, and sometimes the fruit is not good. But you can improve the pruning, so increase the chances of it being good by reading certain things and by thinking about poems in certain ways, and really loving it.” Blood Work won the University of Wisconsin Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Siegel has also had works published in journals including the Cimarron ReviewIndiana ReviewSouthern Humanities Review and TheRumpus.net.