The Truant Lover

Of her book, Jean Valentine wrote, "Juliet Patterson's poems are entirely themselves; they use time and the eye and tongue — all the body, as thought and insight, inside and outside history. The Truant Lover is a marvel." Anyone can use the fragment, but only a few know how to make it do what it’s supposed to — pierce the heart. And once inside the heart, Juliet Patterson can go anywhere & everywhere, & does. Where she comes from is as close as you will ever get to that midnight trembling inside the sweet whiplash of a tongue. This is poetry you can pick a lock with. Your lock. Terrific.—David Rivard

Juliet Patterson's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Bellingham Review, Bloom, Conduit, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Journal, New Orleans Review, Sonora Review, typo, Washington Square, Verse and other magazines. Her book, The Truant Lover, was selected by Jean Valentine as the 2004 winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and will be published in Spring 2006. A semi-finalist in the Nation/Discovery Award, she is the recipient of a 2004 SASE/Jerome fellowship in poetry, a 2004 fellowship with the Institute for Community and Cultural Development through Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, and a 2003 Arts fellowship from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She teaches poetry and creative writing in Minneapolis through the College of St. Catherine, Hamline University, The Loft Literary Center, the Perpich Center for Arts Education, and Banfill-Locke Arts Center. She has worked with children teaching at John Hopkins University with the Center for Talented Youth and as a volunteer educator with the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, United Cambodian Association of Minnesota, the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. She has also worked as a bookseller, apple picker, journalist, and volunteer naturalist. She lives near the west bank of the Mississippi in Minneapolis.