Description
Poetry. Inspired by her husband's struggle with Alzheimer's, Madelyne Camrud leads readers through a meditation on love, reflection, loss, and grief. She reveals light in unexpected places, from graffiti-splashed walls to a lone bird perched on a winter branch. These images bring hope to dark times, showing us life is oddly beautiful.
About the Author
Madelyne Camrud was born on March 11, 1939 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. She completed her first seven and one-fourth years of education at Union #101, a one-room schoolhouse in rural North Dakota. Four years of high school followed her time at Union #101 at Central High School in Grand Forks, where she earned her degree in 1956. After high school, Madelyne completed one year of nursing training at Deaconess hospital that involved basic study at the University of North Dakota. In 1986, after nearly 30 years, Madelyne returned to UND and earned her BA in English with a minor in visual Arts. Two years later, having been awarded a teaching assistantship, she earned her MA in English with a creative writing thesis, which included 50 poems. Her post-graduate work included an independent study at Minnesota State University Moorhead with poet David Mason.
Her work experience includes teaching creative writing courses at UND, Director of Audience Development at the North Dakota Museum of Art, and talk show host at WDAZ Grand Forks, ND where she conducted approximately three interviews per half hour episode. Madelyne has earned many awards, fellowships, and honors for her work. In 1987, she was awarded the Katherine B. Tiffany scholarship from UND. In 1992, her collection of poems "This House Is Filled with Cracks" won the New Rivers Press Minnesota Voices Project. In 1997, two poems from "This House Is Filled with Cracks" aired on Garrison Keiller s The Writer s Almanac. Another poem was chosen to air again in 1999. Camrud earned three separate honorable mentions for poems in 2003, 2010, and 2011 from New Millennium Writings.
In 2005, Camrud earned the Award for Art by the Women s Center in Bemidji State University. She was also named one of the Associate Poet Laureates in North Dakota.
In 2005, "Oddly Beautiful" (under a different title) was a finalist in the Blue Light Book Award competition. Camrud's usual practice is to write poems in response to the natural world and the people around her. Having a husband for 51 years was a huge part of her life experience, and it was only natural to write about the illness that happened to them. "Oddly Beautiful," mostly narrative poems, are about her husband, Ted's, dementia with Lewy bodies, a combination of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The focus is on the more advanced stages of his dementia with specific attention given to the last months culminating in a brief stay in long term care. She felt an urgency to record what was happening as if to give some worth to the hopelessness of the situation, even as she brought him home to die on Hospice. Subsequent poems show the process of her grieving, albeit just beginning.
Madelyne currently resides in Grand Forks, ND, where she is working on her latest collection of poems, tentatively title Lamentations. She has given readings of her work at North Dakota Museum of Art; Ferguson Books and Media, Grand Forks; the Spirit Room, Fargo; Zandbroz Bookstore, Fargo; and the English Department, Merrifield Hall, UND."
