Galena, IL- July 7, 2008- Christine Swanberg, poet, will read and discuss her works on Sunday, July 20 at 1:30 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m. at BRIO Art Gallery in downtown Galena. A teacher and active poet for over thirty years, Swanberg has mentored young and adult writers. Recently she taught in the Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies at National-Louis University, and was poet in residence for Midway Village. She founded the Rock River Poetry Contest and has judged many contests including Pen Women and Illinois Emerging Writers.
Her poems reflect on wondrous aspects of ordinary life. Whether extolling the experience of swimming—“sliding like a dolphin for a moment beneath the water’s silky surface”— or reminiscing about her childhood piano teacher, Mrs. Christiansen,—“affirming my meager meanderings on the cherry wood piano that smells of Lemon Pledge”—her words transform common place incidents into vivid and enchanting experiences.
Robert C. Jones of The Mid-America Poetry Review says, “Whether her images are of the world around us, or the world within us, Christine Swanberg crafts those images with words that come together with an inalienable rightness.”
Over three decades, hundreds of her poems have been published in journals such as The Beloit Poetry Journal, Spoon River Quarterly, Amelia, Chiron, Kansas Quarterly, Creative Woman, Earth's Daughters, Mid-America Review, Powatan Review, Midnight Mind, Sow's Ear, and Wind.
Her published poetry books include: Tonight on This Late Road (Erie St., 1984). Invisible String (Erie St., 1990), Bread Upon the Waters (UW:Whitewater, 1990), Slow Miracle (Lake Shore, 1992), The Tenderness of Memory (Plainview Press, 1995), The Red Lacquer Room (Chiron Press, 2001) and Who Walks Among the Trees with Charity (Wind, 2005).
Swanberg’s work appears in anthologies such as Knowing Stones, Poems of Exotic Travel, I am Becoming the Woman I've Wanted, Jane's Stories, Key West: An Anthology, Pride and Joy, and the forthcoming Still Going Strong. She has edited Korone; Confluence: a Legacy of Rock River Valley; Land Connections: Writers of North Central Illinois, and is currently guest editor for Moon Journal.
Her many awards include a featured reading at Seattle’s Frye Museum through Poetswest, first and second place in Peninsula Pulse, first place in Midwest Poetry Review, second place in Nit and Wit, the Connor Award for Fiction from Northern Illinois University, the YWCA Leader Luncheon Award for the Arts, and the Womanspirit Award from Womanspace. She received a merit scholarship to attend the post-graduate seminar at Vermont College, where she worked with the late Lynda Hull. In addition, several of her poems were selected by the Poetry Center of Chicago for juried readings. From 1995-1998, Swanberg was a regular reader and workshop leader at the Women's Way Festival in Austin, Texas.
Along with poetry, her passions include singing with Womansong Chorale and Mendelssohn Chorale; gardening; swimming; and traveling with Jeffrey, her co-adventurer and husband of 33 years, with whom she has seen much of the world. She strives to lead a somewhat simple life, true to the values of peace and justice. Living in Rockford, Illinois, the Swanbergs open their home to guests of Rockford Urban Ministries and various writers who are visiting the area.
Now retired from teaching, she is available for readings, workshops, and talks. She has given workshops at the Flathead Writers' Conference in Montana, A River Runs Through Us in Northern Illinois, Illinois Wesleyan Conference in Bloomington, Illinois, the McHenry Writers' Conference, and numerous word festivals and conferences in Seattle, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Illinois. She has given readings at colleges, in bookstores, coffee houses, and libraries throughout the United States and can be reached by e-mail at pobiz@core.com.
815.776.1010 
