Marshall: The Poetry Bus

The Poetry Bus is Athena Kildegaard, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Su Love & Sara Dovre Wudali

THE POETRY BUS will head to southwestern Minnesota to visit six communities—Granite Falls, Marshall, Worthington, New London, Bird Island, and New Ulm—of different sizes and different levels of access to the arts. On the bus will be Michael Kleber-Diggs (michaelkleberdiggs.com), Sara Dovre Wudali (saradovrewudali.com), Su Love (sulove.org) and Athena Kildegaard (athenakildegaard.com), four poets who are friends and admirers of one another’s poetry, poetics, and creative powers. During this intensive week, we will set up a table at farmer’s markets and brewpubs to invite the public to readings and where we’ll write poems on demand and proselytize about the value of poetry. Our free public readings will be offered in arts centers, a community theater, and a public library.

The idea of THE POETRY BUS grew out of discussions about the Poetry Out Loud project of the 1960s and 70s that took poets from the metro area and southwestern MN to places around the state (for context: https://archive.mpr.org/stories/1975/09/04/poetry-out-loud). Led by John Rezmerski, poets like Robert Bly, Phoebe Hanson, Meridel LeSueuer and others read poetry and lead workshops in laundromats, cemeteries, cornfields, elementary schools and other venues.

Sara Dovre Wudali

Sara Dovre Wudali (DUHV-ree woo-DAH-lee) is a writer and editor living in Saint Paul. She was a 2024 Poetry Fellow in the Loft Mentor Series and has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Her poems and essays have been published in literary journals and anthologies such as Barrelhouse, under the gum tree, Blood Tree Literature, and the Saint Paul Almanac. She is the co-editor of the hybrid anthology chapbook, All You Need Is One Avocado and the poet-in-residence at La Boulangerie Marguerite. Dovre Wudali grew up on a farm in southwest Minnesota, where wind blows through the cottonwoods and box elder bugs rule.

Athena Kildegaard

Athena Kildegaard’s most recent book of poetry, Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions), won the 2023 WILLA Literary Award for Poetry. Her poems have been Pushcart nominees and she’s the recipient of grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and two fellowships from the Lake Region Arts Council. She teaches at the University of Minnesota Morris.

Michael Kleber-Diggs

Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. He is the author of My Weight in Water, a memoir about his complicated relationship with lap swimming (forthcoming with Spiegel & Grau, 2026). Michael’s debut poetry collection, Worldly Things won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. His poems and essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are simultaneously distinct and interdependent. Michael is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, and he teaches creative writing at Augsburg University and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Su Love

Su Love’s five published books of poetry include Weight of Light, nominated for the Pushcart Editors’ Book Prize, and Buddha, Proof, a Minnesota Book Award finalist. Su’s book in progress concerns legacies of nuclear power in Minnesota and has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the St. Croix Watershed Research Station. As a visiting writer, Su has presented at several colleges, universities, and arts organizations including Salmon Literary Centre, Ireland, and American Space Madrid/Instituto internacional.

MSAB acknowledgement

Athena Kildegaard is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural herita