University of Wisconsin-Superior Professor Julie Gard was recently awarded the Northeastern Minnesota Book award for her poetry collection “I Think I Know You.”

“As someone who has lived, written and taught in the Northland for 17 years, I have come to love and value this community,” said Gard, who teaches writing at UW-Superior. “To have my writing chosen for an award by my literary peers in our region, feels like a milestone.

“I would continue to write no matter what, but I can say that my Northeastern Minnesota Book Award plaque is an affirming addition to my writing desk. I am grateful to the members of Lake Superior Writers who do the hard work of coordinating this book award, and to all the brilliant, creative folks who contribute to the thriving arts scene in the Twin Ports. UW-Superior faculty, staff, students and alumni are a vital part of this arts community. I can’t think of a better place to be a writer and creator.”

The collection, which Gard said took about six years to complete, was inspired by her own curiosity.

Duluth News Tribune writer Jay Gabler called the collection “a turbulent collection of poems circling around the tragedies great and small that we must hold in our minds simply to exist in today’s world.”

“I wanted to explore what the world and people and my life looked like if I approached them with as much honesty and open-mindedness as possible – got in as close as I could to the gnat or the fern or the newspaper story,” said Gard. “Why not imagine a day in the life of [Vladimir] Putin? Why not capture a bus rider’s random bit of overheard wisdom, or the overheard wisdom of rivers and lakes? It’s all material and all inspiration.”

The resulting book of prose poems, which was also included as a finalist for the 2023 INDIES Book Award in Poetry, explores interactions on a one-to-one level, through found dialogue and in locations from coffee shops to beaches, city streets and hiking trails.

“Many of the poems are set in Duluth and Superior, but some focus on the East Coast, where I’m from, and on Russia, where I lived for two years in my 20s,” said Gard. “I like to think that these poems are hopeful, even as they deal with difficult topics such as loss, death and political divides. Maybe sometimes they’re even funny – I hope so.”