About Laura Van Prooyen
Laura Van Prooyen is author of two collections of poetry, Our House Was on Fire(Ashland Poetry Press 2015) nominated by Philip Levine and winner of the McGovern Prize and Inkblot and Altar (Pecan Grove Press 2006). Her poems also have appeared in APR, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review among others. Van Prooyen teaches in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing program at Miami University, and she lives in San Antonio, TX.
A Profile of the Author
Notes on “Bless The Feral Hog”
A few years ago, the Texas Dept. of Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, tried to make it legal for people to poison feral hogs to try to control the population. The poison promised a slow, terrible, painful death for these sentient creatures. This great idea came after allowing people to shoot feral hogs from helicopters (true story) failed to control the population. Meanwhile, I recalled Galway Kinnell’s romanticized poem about St. Francis and the Sow, and I wondered where these two ideas might meet. You see where the poem ended up.
Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.
I have three cats, and it’s probably wrong to play favorites, but my lap belongs to Pico. Full name Pico de Gato “Picoso” Clyne. His paw prints are all over my poems, literally. He’s a crooked-jaw wonder who looks like Snowball from the Simpsons:
