Robert Hedin

Life and work

Hedin holds degrees from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has taught at Sheldon Jackson College (Sitka, Alaska), the University of Alaska, St. Olaf College, and Wake Forest University where he was Poet-in-Residence from 1980-1992. In 2001-2002, he served as the Edelstein-Keller Writer of Distinction at the University of Minnesota, a special chair in the Program of Creative Writing.

He is the author, translator, and editor of twenty-four books of poetry and prose, including At the Great Door of Morning: Selected Poems and Translations (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge (Copper Canyon Press, 2008)(co-translated with Robert Bly), and The Great Machines: Poems and Songs of the American Railroad (University of Iowa Press, 1996).

Hedin is co-founder (with his wife, Carolyn) and former Executive Director (1995 – 2015) of the Anderson Center at Tower View (Alexander P. Anderson) the largest residential artist retreat in the Upper Midwest.

His poems and translations have been published in numerous journals and collections, including American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, and Poetry, as well as in Good other anthologies and textbooks. His work has also been featured on Writer’s Almanac, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and in Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated column, American Life in Poetry.

Hedin currently lives in Frontenac, Minnesota.

Works

Poetry

At the Great Door of Morning: Selected Poems and Translations (Copper Canyon Press, 2017)

The Light Under The Door (Red Dragonfly Press, 2014)

Poems Prose Poems (Red Dragonfly Press, 2013)

Old Liberators: New and Selected Poems and Translations (Holy Cow Press, 1998)

Tornadoes (Ion Books, 1990)

County O (Copper Canyon Press, 1984)

At the Home-Altar (Copper Canyon Press, 1978)

Snow Country (Copper Canyon Press, 1975)

Translations

The Lure-Maker from Posio: Prose Poems of Dag T. Straumsvåg (with Louis Jenkins, Red Dragonfly Press, 2011)

The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge (with Robert Bly, Copper Canyon Press, 2008)

A Bumpy Ride to the Slaughterhouse: Prose Poems of Dag T. Straumsvåg (with Louis Jenkins, Red Dragonfly Press, 2006)

The Roads Have Come To An End Now: Selected and Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen (with Robert Bly and Roger Greenwald, Copper Canyon Press, 2001)

The Bullfinch Rising from the Cherry Tree: Poems of Olav H. Hauge (Brooding Heron Press, 2001)

The Dream Factory: A Children's Story by Bjorn Sortland (with Emily Christianson, Lerner Publishing Co., 2001)

Night Music: Poems of Rolf Jacobsen (State Street Press, 1994)

Edited collections

Where One Voice Ends Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007)

Old Glory: American War Poems from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorism (Persea Books, 2004)

Perfect In Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (with Michael Waters, Southern Illinois University Press, 2003)

Keys To The Interior: Twenty-Five Years of the Great River Review (with Richard Broderick, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2002)

The Zeppelin Reader: Stories, Poems and Songs from the Age of Airships (University of Iowa Press, 1998))

The Great Machines: Poems and Songs of the American Railroad (University of Iowa Press, 1996)

The Great Land: Reflections on Alaska (with Gary Holthaus, University of Arizona Press, 1994)

Alaska: Reflections on Land and Spirit (with Gary Holthaus, University of Arizona Press, 1989)

In the Dreamlight: Twenty-One Alaskan Writers (with David Stark, Copper Canyon Press, 1984)