Fiction And Poetry Writing Winners, Reading And Math Skills, Retro Report: Superpredators

Featured in this Show

• Writing Contest Honors Wisconsin's Best Fiction, Poetry

  Download

  An annual writing contest honored Wisconsin writers for their work in poetry and fiction this week.

  In the event, which was sponsored by Wisconsin People & Ideas, the magazine of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, judges evaluated more than 500 poems and 69 short stories.

  Karen Loeb took the prize in the fiction category for her short story, “The Walk to Makino.” Loeb teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.

  Her story is set in Japan, from the perspective of an American woman whose father is visiting and the awkward encounter that follows.

  “A lot of my fiction is driven by geography,” she said.

  Loeb said the story is based on her experiences teaching in Japan.

  “My father came to visit us and from that grew the story,” Loeb said. “Although I fictionalized the events in the story, it is based on the relationship that I had with my own father — a kind of difficult relationship as parent children relationships often are.”

  With a difficult family history and the father’s declining mental faculties, she said, “The father and daughter in the story don’t know each other very well.”

  Elsewhere in the contest, Dion Kempthorne, of Richland Center, won in the poetry category for his work, “Liturgy of the Swallow.” A professor emeritus from the UW System, Kempthorne’s poem is filled with images of a bird trapped in a church. He said the work is “full of wordplay and bird play,” and speaks to the sense of confinement and the urge to escape.

  “The general appeal of the poem is to everyone who has ever felt like they were trapped in a situation, he said, “perhaps in a lecture hall where Dion Kempthorne is talking too long, or perhaps on a job, or perhaps in a bad marriage, or perhaps in an MRI machine.”

  He said people can identify with the bird looking for a way out.

  “It’s about the flight of the bird impressing us in his effort to escape the contraption of the human building and civilization,” he said.

  Kempthorne said he doesn’t try to send one specific message in a poem.

  “My feeling is that a good poem is really open to interpretation,” he said. “I don’t begin with an intent for meaning, but with an image, something that’s caught my eye. It might be a bird in church or a dog tied to a parking meter or an overheard conversation at the Kwik-Trip.”

  Both works are available at the Wisconsin Academy’s website:

  • Karen Loeb, “The Walk to Makino”
  • Dion Kempthorne, “Liturgy of the Swallow”

• High School Seniors Show Little Improvement In Math, Reading

  Download

  A recent national assessment shows that high school seniors have shown little-to-no improvement in math and reading skills in the last four years. An education expert talks about why scores aren’t improving, and what, if anything, needs to change.

• Wisconsin Academy Honors Talent In Fiction And Poetry

  Download

  The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters is honoring two Wisconsin writers for their work in poetry and fiction. Dion Kempthorne authored the poem “Liturgy of the Swallow” and Karen Loeb authored the short story “The Walk to Makino.”

• Twenty years ago, researchers warned of the rise of “superpredators”–a violent class of criminals who would create an unprecedented wave of violent crime. Politicians responded with new, tougher laws. A new report tells the story of the superpredator, and why the predictions went wrong.