On Sunday, April 7, Baton Rouge Gallery will host a reading and conversation with Baton Rouge poet Ed Ruzicka as he presents his newly released poetry book, Squalls (Kelsay Press). As with all Sundays@4 performances, this will be free and open to the public.
Squalls is a lightening cracked set of poems grounded in the soil and soul of Louisiana. Poet Charles De Gravelles has said, “Nothing is too insignificant—a toddler discovering its tongue or a flattened gum wrapper on a path—to evade Ed Ruzicka’s eye, nothing too commonplace to resist exploring. However small its beginning, each poem in Squalls becomes a flood, a story whose banks can’t contain the deluge of its images, and yet a story whose images never slow an inexorable push toward a surprising and satisfying finish. Each of these poems is its own intoxication.”
Ed Ruzicka is the author of two previous full-length books of poetry, My Life in Cars and Engines of Belief. His poems have appeared in the Chicago Literary Review, the Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Canary as well as many other literary journals and anthologies. Ed has been a finalist for the Dana Award and the New Millennium Award. Ed will also use this reading as a launch for those who would like to be part of the newly formed Poetry Society of Louisiana. Ed was born in rural Illinois. He has two grown daughters, two small, well-loved grandchildren, two step-daughters and two step-grandchildren. Ed is an occupational therapist. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife, Renee.
