Writing Meets Art in Southwest Minneapolis

A new reading series held at art spaces across Southwest Minneapolis is named for the daughter Elissa Cottle never had.

“This is my baby, literally–no, not literally,” Cottle, a published poet, said of the series.

When Cottle, a mother of two, was pregnant with her second son and did not yet know the sex, she and her husband settled on the name Gwendolyn for a girl. Gwendolyn turned out to be Lucas. Years later, after nurturing the dream to curate a reading series, Gwendolyn’s Room was, in a sense, born. 

Cottle, who is also a writing teacher at Lake Harriet Community Education, started Gwendolyn’s Room in the fall of 2010, with her students as the first readers.

“I live in Southwest Minneapolis where there are tons of great artists and writers. I’m tired of schlepping all the way out to St. Paul or wherever and I’ve got really good organizing skills,” Cottle said. “Southwest Minneapolis needs a literary reading series if for no other reason than I won’t have to drive so far.”

Each Gwendolyn’s Room event will be held at an art gallery or art space in Southwest Minneapolis. The first curated reading was held at on Sunday, Feb. 27. 

On the final day of the Clinton Rost show “Spy House,” a few hours before the Oscars honored the best films of the year, participants and attendees at Gwendolyn’s Room celebrated the experience of the written word read aloud–something about which Cottle feels strongly.

“It’s so important for my art form–I’m a poet–and the creative writing art form to be read out loud,” she said. “It’s like theater–would you rather read a play or see a play?”

It was an afternoon of art among art. Before a backdrop of Rost’s paintings, four poets, including Cottle, read their work to an audience of about 20. Some were published works, others were brand-spanking-new. 

“It’s still I wouldn’t say a work in progress because I supposedly finished it yesterday,” writer Jason Maher said to introduce the newest of his pieces.

Nate Thomas read from his poetry chapbook All Fishes Weep, a collaborative work with local painter Susan Solomon, who was also at the event to discuss her art. 

“There are some poems that you know where you’re going when you write them and others that make themselves known,” Nate Thomas said in preface to the poem “Now is Apples.”  

Here’s a snippet of the poem:

The moon draws up our salted blood. 

We answer back–of Noah’s flood 

of memory, of god-oceans moved 

–each wave a freckle, each wave a love.

The next Gwendolyn’s Room will be held on April 17. The location is yet to be determined. Christopher Title, who has published work in Living Out, rock paper scissors and Konundrum Engine Literary Review will be at the event. So will Patricia Weaver Francisco, author of TELLING: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery, winner of the Minnesota Book Award.

Cottle is seeking two additional writers for the reading. If you would like to be considered, send your writing sample, biography, city and (if Minneapolis) neighborhood to Cottle at elissa.ann@comcast.net.

Cottle said the requirements are simple. “You have to be published and I have to like it.”