Getting his rhythm back

By Cindy Votruba
Minneota writer Bill Holm is usually not at a loss for words. But when he recently received a noteworthy statewide arts award, Holm said he didn’t know what to say. Holm was named the 11th McKnight Distinguished Artist by the McKnight Foundation. The honor includes a $50,000 stipend.

It’s not an award you apply for, Holm said Monday, and he doesn’t know how he was considered for the honor or who suggested him.

But if he did, he’d either buy them a drink or take them out for coffee, Holm said.

Holm said the committee for the McKnight Foundation award needs it to be a complete surprise when it presents it to an honoree. He was in a meeting with his editor of Milkweed Editions in Minneapolis, Emilie Buchwald, when he learned the news.

And it did come as a complete surprise, Holm said.

“I was, of course, touched and honored, and for once in my life, speechless,” Holm said.

All the foundations in Minnesota have been generous to artists, as well as science and medicine, Holm said.

Holm said William McKnight, founder of the Foundation, was a small-town farm boy from White, S.D.

“I don’t know if he’d (McKnight) think that was a little amusing, that the money would come back to his own area,” Holm said.

Past winners of the McKnight Foundation Award have not all been as “damned” Minnesotan as he is, Holm said, but have spent most of their life working in the state.

But his fellow writing recipient lived in the same area.

“The two poets, Robert Bly and I, are both western Minnesota guys,” Holm said.

Bly hails originally from Madison and Holm is in Minneota.

Another one of those past winners includes Holm’s publisher and editor, Buchwald of Milkweed Editions of Minneapolis.

Holm has written 10 books of poems and essays, several of which have been published by Milkweed.

“I’ve been grateful for their presence,” Holm said about Milkweed.

During the summer, the McKnight Foundation is putting together a publication on Holm and his work.

“They’re quite elegant,” Holm said.

Holm said the Foundation is doing interviews with people about his work, friends of his, and the book will include pieces he has written and something he still has to write.

Holm recently retired from Southwest Minnesota State University, after teaching in the English department for 27 years. He said he spent 60 years in the school “rhythm of his life,” from attending country school until seventh grade, to high school, to college, to graduate school, and then teaching at the university.

“Part of my life is mine again, and I get to have my rhythm back,” Holm said.

And now that he doesn’t have to prepare for school, Holm has to rework that rhythm.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do in September,” Holm said.

But he does know what he’s going to be doing for the next few months. Holm said he’s going to finish a book of poems he wrote in Iceland on the country itself and start work on another book of essays.

Next week, Holm returns to his second home in Iceland for the summer, something he’s done for the last 10 years.

“I don’t like mosquitoes or the heat,” Holm said.