Paul Brooke lives in Ames, Iowa and teaches in Des Moines at Grand View College. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1995 and his M.A. in English from Iowa State University.

His poetry has been published in such journals as Magma (London, England), Rocky Mountain Review, Flyway, Green Fuse, Permafrost, etc. Two years ago he was featured in the anthology, Voices on the Landscape: Contemporary Iowa Poets.

His writing draws from two major areas: nature and culture. Once working as a biologist and naturalist, Brooke's writing draws from environmental issues and scientific observation. Culturally, Brooke has studied the Lakota people and their language, and he is currently finishing a biography entitled Ash of the Dragonfly: The Life History of a Lakota Woman.

Strings: Two Yakama Women in the 1800s is a chapbook that was created from historical, ethnographic, and cultural record. Both stories are interpretted from calendar strings, balls of string with memory markers, each capturing a significant life event. The strings show a mother and a daughter as they live at the turn of the 19th century, as they fall in love, marry, give birth, meet the first white men, etc. The book captures the passion and the hardship that Yakama Indian experienced during this time. Each book comes with a hand-made string, so the reader can feel what these memory markers actually felt and looked like, so as to better relate to the story-telling method of the book.

Strings: The Lives of Two Yakama Women in the 1800s

A Small Garlic Press catalog

A Small Garlic Press book author profile. Last updated on 2002/7/1.
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