About Ingrid Wendt

Biography – Professional Experience – Awards – Community Service – Foreign Travel & Teaching

Biography

Ingrid Wendt is the author of five books of poems, a book-length teaching guide, one chapbook, and numerous articles and reviews. Co-editor of two anthologies—In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts and From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry—Ingrid’s poetry and prose appear in such magazines and anthologies as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Northwest Review, Terrain, About Place, Beloit Poetry Journal, and No More Masks! An Anthology of 20th Century American Women Poets.

Her many distinctions include the Oregon Book Award, the D.H. Lawrence Award, the Editions Prize, the Yellowglen Award, and grants from Oregon Literary Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the Cultural Ministry of Munich. Her work has been set to choral and instrumental music, she has opened a session of the Oregon State Legislature with a poem, and she has been featured three times on National Public Radio by Garrison Keillor of “The Writer’s Almanac.”

A popular keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, and a three-time Fulbright Professor in Germany, Ingrid has taught literature and poetry writing at all educational levels, in hundreds of public-school classrooms, grades K-12, has given many dozens of readings across the US, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Spain, and has served as Poet-in-Residence at several colleges in the upper Midwest.

A certified scuba diver, a volunteer at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and a classically-trained pianist and organist, Ingrid has sung with choral groups for more than forty years, currently with Eugene’s premier chamber group, Eugene Vocal Arts, and with the Eugene Symphony Chorus.

Professional Experience

Over 150 readings and presentations nationwide and overseas
Thirty years as visiting poet, grades K-12, hundreds of classrooms in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Illinois, Iowa, Germany
College and university guest lectureships and residencies
Antioch University MFA Program, Faculty
Senior Fulbright Professorship, University of Frankfurt, Germany
Fulbright Senior Specialist, University of Freiburg, Germany
College and university teaching: poetry writing, women’s studies, literature, composition

Awards, Grants, Honors (partial list)

Opened a session of the Oregon State Legislature with a poem
Oregon Book Award in poetry, for second book, Singing the Mozart Requiem
Yellowglen Award for third book, The Angle of Sharpest Ascending
Editions Prize for fourth book, Surgeonfish.
Three poems read by Garrison Keillor on “The Writer’s Almanac”
Evensong (fifth book of poems) nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
1st prize, Carolyn Kizer Poetry Award, Calapooya Collage, for “Double Rondeau in December”
1st prize for “The Mary Anderson Center,” essay, national competition: Alliance of Artists Communities.
Career Opportunity Grant, Oregon Arts Commission. Funding for travel expenses to give readings at 12 bookstores throughout Oregon and Washington,
to promote her 5th book of poems, Evensong.
Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Poetry, 2008. Funding to write a series of poems, based on her family heritage and her early years in Aurora, Illinois.
“Featured Poet” in Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review.
Elected to the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame, April 2008, Geneva, Illinois.
Distinguished Achievement Award, Cornell College, 2006, given by college president and alumni association.

Community Service

Believing in the responsibility of writers to share their talents and to participate in the life of their communities, Ingrid Wendt has adjudicated literary contests and organized numerous poetry readings. Since 1982, she has been on the editorial board of Calyx, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women. Co-founder and past president of the Lane Literary Guild — a non-profit organization providing services and venues for local and regional writers — she has also served on the boards of directors of the Eugene Concert Choir and the Lane Arts Council. In 2003, and again in 2006, she directed the local campaign “Operation Paperback,” which collected and shipped over 5,000 used books to U.S. troops stationed overseas.

Foreign Travel and Teaching

Since 1983, Wendt has been offered numerous professional opportunities for international travel, teaching, as well as residence periods of one month or more, devoted to research and writing.

She has delivered a paper at an international writers’ festival, in Lahti, Finland; shared poems and conversation in what was once called Leningrad (1987) with Soviet poets, under the official auspices of the Soviet Writers’ Union; given a presentation at an international Native American studies symposium, hosted by the University of Valencia, Spain; lived for five weeks at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy; and spent other extended periods in Mexico, Chile, Great Britain, Italy, France, Norway, and Germany.

In 1994-95, Wendt was a senior Fulbright professor for two semesters, at the University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where she introduced semester-long courses in strategies for teaching poetry writing in the classroom for students in the departments of Education and American Studies. These classes were also attended by practicing high school teachers of English language.

During that year the Fulbright Commission, together with the Amerika Haus/USIS program, sent Ingrid to conduct half-day teacher education workshops, on the same topic, in ten cities in every part of Germany. In 1999, the publisher Ernst Klett Schulbuchverlag, distributor of her teaching guide, brought her back to Germany for more teacher workshops in Frankfurt. Also in 1999, the northwestern branch of the German teachers’ union sponsored her full-day teacher workshop in Stadthagen.

In addition to workshops, Ingrid has given poetry readings in numerous German cities and has visited upper-level high school English language classes in Freidrichsdorf, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Oberursel, Berlin, Germany and Padova, Italy.

Prior to giving poetry readings in Turin, Parma, Rome, Florence, and Venice, Italy, a bilingual (Italian-English) selection of Wendt’s second book of poems, Singing the Mozart Requiem, was published by Multimedia Editions, of Salerno, Italy, in 1995.

For six weeks in the summers of 2004 and 2005, Ingrid taught American Literature and Creative Writing for student teachers of English as a Second Language at the University of Education, Freiburg, Germany. This was part of the then-new Fulbright Senior Specialist Program, which pays visiting professors’ salaries and round-trip travel, with living expenses covered by host universities.

Through this program she is still available for future two- to six-week visiting scholar appointments, which can include teaching and/or visiting classes, lecturing, attending conferences, consulting, assisting with curriculum development, poetry readings, working with student publications, and so forth, in any country with a U.S. Fulbright office and staff.

The question sometimes arises: does Ingrid speak fluent German and Italian? The quick answer is no, though she’s taught in Spanish, within the U.S., and speaks enough German and Italian to make light conversation. All of her European presentations have been given in English, as are those given by most Fulbright professors and other Americans working beyond U.S. borders. University-schooled populations of most European countries, in Ingrid’s experience, are fluent in English—as are students from upper high school grades through university.

Ingrid Wendt CV

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