BkMk Press Publishes Poetry Book That Explores the Influence

and Attraction of Lake Erie

 Kansas City, Mo.—BkMk Press is pleased to announce the publication of Lake Erie Blue, poems by Susan Grimm. In this book, Grimm sometimes writes in the voices of her ancestors, some of whom immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, from Central Europe. In other poems, she tries to grasp what she calls “the slippery nature of Lake Erie’s influence and attraction” during the span of her own life. The particular themes of family and locale reverberate against more universal themes such as love and disappointment. The result is what poet David Citino calls “a vibrant and haunted city of desire lying along a great lake that ripples with mystery.”

Writer Karen Kovacik notes that “Lake Erie Blue embodies what it means to know a place deeply, a rare delight in our rootless culture. Familiarity, for Grimm, breeds not contempt but its ecstatic opposite.” And Lynn Powell, author of Old & New Testaments and The Zones of Paradise, notes that “the language of Lake Erie Blue is as vast, startling, and unpredictable as the great body of water the book is named for.”

Susan Grimm’s writing has appeared in such publications as the Plain Dealer, Rattapallax, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She has received an Ohio Arts Council fellowship in poetry and the Ohio Poet of the Year Award from the Ohio Poetry Day Association. She teaches at Cleveland State University. Lake Erie Blue is her first full-length book. She is also the author of the chapbook Almost Home (Cleveland State University Poetry Center).  

BkMk Press was founded in 1971 and became a part of UMKC in 1983. The press publishes fine literature by contemporary authors. Financial support for Lake Erie Blue was provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. BkMk Press also receives support from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and private donations.