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// Workers AI · dad joke modeIs Susan Ludvigson a poet? Ludvigson to be heard.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Susan Ludvigson
Born (1942-02-13) February 13, 1942 (age 84)
Rice Lake, Wisconsin, U.S.
Education
OccupationPoet
Spouse
    David Bartels
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1961; div. 1974)​
    Scott Ely
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1988; died 2013)​
Writing career
Years active1974–present
GenrePoetry
Notable awardsGuggenheim Fellowship (1983)

Susan Gayle Ludvigson (born February 13, 1942) is an American poet. A 1983 Guggenheim Fellow, she has written more than half a dozen poetry volumes. She is also a professor emeritus[1] at Winthrop University.

Biography

[edit]

Susan Gayle Ludvigson was born on February 13, 1942, in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.[2] Of Norwegian-American and Swedish-American descent, she was the first-born of Mabel Helgeland and Howard C. Ludvigson, the latter of whom was a cafe owner and horse breeder.[3][4] She obtained a bachelor's degree[a] in English and psychology from University of Wisconsin–River Falls in 1965.[3]

Ludvigson taught English at public schools in River Falls, Wisconsin (1965-1968) and Ann Arbor, Michigan (1968-1971).[2] She later attended University of North Carolina at Charlotte (where she got an MA in Education in 1973) and worked as a mental health educator in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (1972-1973).[2] She attended the University of South Carolina under James Dickey, spending two years there.[3]

Ludvigson had been writing poems since childhood, but was initially disinterested in a career.[5] However, she dealt with problems in her first marriage with therapy poems, and became inspired to write them by seeing Donald Hall read Galway Kinnell's "The Bear".[5] After moving to Charlotte[6] and joining several writers from the Charlotte Writers Club in 1972,[7] She released her first poetry volume Step Carefully in Night Grass in 1974,[3] winning the North Carolina Poetry Council's 1975 Oscar Arnold Young Memorial Award for that book.[8] She became an assistant professor of English at Winthrop College in 1975.[2]

In 1980, Ludvigson received a MacDowell Fellowship in Literature.[9] In 1981, she published another poetry volume, Northern Lights,[3] and she was promoted to associate professor at Winthrop.[2] In 1983, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, for which she would travel to Scandinavia; she stated that her intent was to "understand how Scandinavian Americans I grew up with and am go to be the way they are".[7][2][6] After three of her friends died in three successive but separate years, she wrote The Swimmer, a small volume where she "attempt[s] to come to terms with death and other losses" amidst the then-recent deaths of three of her friends;[10] it was released in 1984.[3]

In 1986,[4] Ludvigson released Defining The Holy, her first poetry book since her return from her European trip.[11] That same year,[3] she published The Beautiful Noon of No Shadow, a three-part volume centered on the idea of change.[12] She later released To Find the Gold (1990[3]) where she addresses several aspects of art, including the life of sculptor Camille Claudel and her own art career,[13] Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming (1993[3]), where she uses flight as a prominent motif.[14] She also recorded an hour of poetry at the Library of Congress.[15]

Ludvigson released Trinity (1996[3]), which has the first of its three sections written in terza rima,[16] and Sweet Confluence (2000), a collection of previous Ludvigson poems.[17] She appeared in a 2000 International Poetry Forum reading with Sherod Santos, with Bob Hoover of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calling them "practitioners of the narrative poem [who] brought to the evening's reading a collection packed with vivid descriptions, compelling stories and a clear, powerful style".[18] In 2006, she published another volume, Escaping the House of Certainty, where she addresses the intersection of human identity and physical reality.[19] In April 2009, she was elected to the South Carolina Academy of Authors.[20] She won the 2014 Five Points James Dickey Prize for Poetry.[21]

According to Ken Autrey, some of Ludvigson's poetry volumes use themes like grief, memories, dreams, and relationships.[3] Ludvigson explained in a 2002 interview with the Centre Daily Times that many of her poems are centered on her family and childhood.[5] Judy Jo Small describes Ludvigson as "a Romantic quester in a postmodern era [who] writes as a woman searching for wider, deeper experience of herself and her world."[4] Michael J. Bugeja said that "Ludvigson is known for her ability to re-create entire worlds out of the clay of language".[14] Jeff Gundy said that her poetry tends to be free verse.[19]

Ludvigson married speech and hearing therapist David Bartels in 1961; the couple had one son before their divorce in 1974.[3][6] On October 28, 1988, she married Scott Ely, a novelist who also taught at Winthrop, in Puivert, France;[3][22] they were married until his death in 2013.[23] She lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina.[24]

Works

[edit]
  • Step Carefully in Night Grass (1974)[b]
  • Northern Lights (1981)[c]
  • The Swimmer (1984)[d]
  • The Beautiful Noon of No Shadow (1986)[e]
  • Defining The Holy (1986)[11]
  • To Find the Gold (1990)[f]
  • Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming (1993)[g]
  • Trinity (1996)[16]
  • Sweet Confluence (2000)[h]
  • Escaping the House of Certainty (2006)[i]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ Sources conflict on whether it is specifically a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors[3] or a Bachelor of Science degree.[2]
  2. ↑ Reviews of this book: [25][26]
  3. ↑ Reviews of this book: [27][28][29]
  4. ↑ Reviews of this book: [30][10][31][32]
  5. ↑ Reviews of this book: [33][34][35][12]
  6. ↑ Reviews of this book: [13][36][37][38]
  7. ↑ Reviews of this book: [39][14][40][41]
  8. ↑ Reviews of this book: [17][42][43][44]
  9. ↑ Reviews of this book: [19][45]

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ "Ludvigson". South Carolina Academy of Authors. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Reports of the President and the Treasurer. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1983. p. 76.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Autrey, Ken. "Ludvigson, Susan". South Carolina Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on March 10, 2026. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 Small, Judy Jo (1994). Bain, Robert A.; Flora, Joseph M. (eds.). Contemporary Poets, Dramatists, Essayists, and Novelists of the South: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. p. 299.
  5. 1 2 3 Starr, William W. (November 24, 2002). "Poet's work what dreams are made of". Centre Daily Times. p. C10 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. 1 2 3 Romine, Dannye (April 10, 1983). "Winthrop Poet Wins Prestigious Guggenheim Grant". The Charlotte Observer. pp. F1, F10.
  7. 1 2 Woods, Jennifer (April 18, 1983). "Winthrop poet gets Guggenheim". The Herald. p. 12 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ "Former Charlotte Poet Wins Award". The Charlotte Observer. October 19, 1975. p. 10B.
  9. ↑ "Susan Ludvigson - Artist". MacDowell. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  10. 1 2 McElveen, Idris (October 28, 1984). "Poems focus on coping with grief". The State. p. 6-F – via Newspapers.com.
  11. 1 2 Suther, Judith (April 20, 1986). "Ludvigson's Love Poems Extend Beyond Realm Of Romance". The Charlotte Observer. p. 12F – via Newspapers.com.
  12. 1 2 Suther, Judith D. (March 15, 1987). "Ludvigson Explores Change, Renewal In 'Beautiful Noon'". The Charlotte Observer. p. 11F – via Newspapers.com.
  13. 1 2 Brinson, Claudia Smith (June 3, 1990). "Poems of life, art juxtaposed". The State. p. 6-F – via Newspapers.com.
  14. 1 2 3 Bugeja, Michael J (1995). "Read & recommended -- Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming". Writer's Digest. Vol. 75, no. 3. p. 12. ProQuest 209416087.
  15. ↑ Powell, Dannye Romine (May 6, 1995). "Thieves, a native, and tidbits". The Charlotte Observer. p. C1 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. 1 2 Parker, Jennifer Woods (May 25, 1997). "Poems ignite new interest in the gospels, folklore". The Charlotte Observer. p. 5D – via Newspapers.com.
  17. 1 2 Amen, John (July 1, 2001). "Strong imagery helps Ludvigson connect". The Charlotte Observer. p. 7F – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑ Hoover, Bob (March 2, 2000). "MASTERS REVEAL POWER OF THE NARRATIVE POEM". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. B-2. ProQuest 391362229.
  19. 1 2 3 Gundy, Jeff (2007). "Vision and Virtuosity". The Georgia Review. 61 (4). Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia by and on Behalf of the University of Georgia and the Georgia Review: 829–843. ISSN 0016-8386. JSTOR 41402908.
  20. ↑ "Ludvigson to Be Inducted into S.C. Academy of Authors" (PDF). Winthrop News. Winthrop University. March 10, 2009.
  21. ↑ Isokawa, Dana (2014). "Recent Winners". Poets & Writers. Vol. 42, no. 6. p. 129-139, 141, 143. ProQuest 1613155556.
  22. ↑ Romine, Dannye (October 16, 1988). "Literary Romance In France". The Charlotte Observer. p. 11F – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ↑ "Long-Time Associate English Professor, Writer Passes Away". Winthrop News. Winthrop University. November 1, 2013.
  24. ↑ "Susan Ludvigson". Open Road Media. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
  25. ↑ Metcalfe, Geoff (November 10, 1974). "Bartels' Poetry Touches Reader". The State. p. 4-E – via Newspapers.com.
  26. ↑ Moose, Ruth (August 8, 1974). "Poet Susan Bartels; Remember The Name". The Salisbury Post. p. 1D – via Newspapers.com.
  27. ↑ Chappell, Fred (April 11, 1982). "New poetry: bright books, two real winners". The Roanoke Times. p. F4 – via Newspapers.com.
  28. ↑ Hollahan, Eugene (June 13, 1982). "Northern Lights: Poems". The Atlanta Journal. p. 12-H – via Newspapers.com.
  29. ↑ Stitt, Peter (1982). "The Objective Mode in Contemporary Lyric Poetry". The Georgia Review. 36 (2). Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia by and on Behalf of the University of Georgia and the Georgia Review: 438–448. ISSN 0016-8386.
  30. ↑ Chappell, Fred (September 9, 1984). "Contrasts seen in poets' new volumes". News and Record. p. E5 – via Newspapers.com.
  31. ↑ Shetley, Vernon (1985). "Review of The Swimmer". Poetry. 146 (1). Poetry Foundation: 41–43. ISSN 0032-2032.
  32. ↑ Suther, Judith D. (August 26, 1984). "Think Poetry Is Over Your Head?". The Charlotte Observer. p. 8F – via Newspapers.com.
  33. ↑ Chappell, Fred (March 29, 1987). "Poetry as 'confident as a dogwood petal'". The News and Observer. p. 4D – via Newspapers.com.
  34. ↑ Fulton, Alice (1988). "Main Things". Poetry. 151 (4). Poetry Foundation: 360–377. ISSN 0032-2032.
  35. ↑ Lane, John (March 29, 1987). "Poet's fourth book deals with light". The State. p. 5-F – via Newspapers.com.
  36. ↑ Fay, Julie (1991). "Cathars, Kids, and Catharsis: Three Poets". The Kenyon Review. 13 (1). Kenyon College: 203–210. ISSN 0163-075X.
  37. ↑ McFee, Michael (April 29, 1990). "Heart Of 'Gold'". The Charlotte Observer. p. 5G – via Newspapers.com.
  38. ↑ "Poetry -- To Find the Gold by Susan Ludvigson". Virginia Quarterly Review. Vol. 67, no. 1. 1991. p. S29. ProQuest 205369331.
  39. ↑ Kitchen, Judith (1994). "A Mind of Winter". The Georgia Review. 48 (1). Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia by and on Behalf of the University of Georgia and the Georgia Review: 162–180. ISSN 0016-8386. JSTOR 41400613.
  40. ↑ Ward, Scott (1995). "Book reviews -- Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming by Susan Ludvigson / Hunger by Lola Haskins / Forecast by Floyd Collins". Southern Humanities Review. Vol. 29, no. 3. p. 303. ProQuest 217116781.
  41. ↑ Susskind, H. "English & American -- Everything winged must be dreaming: Poems by Susan Ludvigson". Choice. Vol. 31, no. 10. p. 1579. ProQuest 225836210.
  42. ↑ Johnson, Greg (2001). "Natural Selection". The Georgia Review. 55 (3). Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia by and on Behalf of the University of Georgia and the Georgia Review: 631–644. ISSN 0016-8386. JSTOR 41380698.
  43. ↑ McKee, Louis (October 15, 2000). "Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems". Library Journal. Vol. 125, no. 17. p. 75. ProQuest 196799154.
  44. ↑ Starr, William W. (January 14, 2001). "South Carolina poets score in memorable books". The State. p. F5 – via Newspapers.com.
  45. ↑ Carter, Catherine (2009). "North Carolina Literary Review". No. 18. p. 167-170. ProQuest 2555179879.
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