On Sunday, January 5, Baton Rouge Gallery’s Sundays@4 series is honored to host a presentation and discussion by Dr. Eric Doise on his late wife’s poetry book “Chamber after Chamber”. As with all Sundays@4 experiences, this will be free and open to the public.

Eric Doise will be reading from and discussing Chamber After Chamber, the most recent book of poetry written by his late wife and best friend Saara Myrene Raappana. A meditation on the word “heart” and its many meanings, the book follows a speaker from her rural childhood in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to her adult years in the congested traffic of southern China as she grapples with her family’s legacy, what it means to be an American living abroad, and the push-and-pull of home. Poet Emily Hunt writes, “Chamber after Chamber is alive with thunder, stinging insects, mud, animal blood, and human sweat; the electric influence of Lake Superior is felt throughout. This cunning, graceful speaker elucidates one of life’s most dazzling contradictions: that the heart—'the part that never sleeps’—is at once spirit and flesh, ‘light’ and ‘meat.’” Thoughtful and daring poetry, Chamber after Chamber won the 2023 Juniper Prize for Poetry from UMass Press and was published just days after Saara’s death at age 48.

Born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Saara Myrene Raappana served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern China before moving to Southwest Minnesota. She also wrote the chapbooks A Story of America Goes Walking (in collaboration with artist Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton, Shechem Press, 2016) and Milk Tooth, Levee, Fever (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). She received grants and scholarships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Born and raised in Baton Rouge, Eric Doise served in southern China as a Peace Corps Volunteer and is now an associate professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. He has published articles and chapters in several academic journals and anthologies, including The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. He earned his PhD from the University of Florida. 

Sundays@4 is presented in partnership with the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area whose mission is to enhance the identity of our unique American landscape by preserving and promoting our heritage and by fostering progress for local champions that create authentic, powerful connections between people, culture, and the environment.