2008 Woodie Awards
Tom Montag: Another Facet of the Jewel
Ross Fale
Issue date: 10/21/04 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Tom Montag is a soft-spoken man with a large presence. His bushy, graying beard almost invites one to hug him like a teddy bear. However, there's much more to him than his appearance.
Over the past thirty years he's been publishing poems, essays, memoirs, literary criticisms, creative non-fiction, and has also given workshops in all listed areas. This year he was one of three finalists for the position of Wisconsin Poet Laureate, and is currently teaching creative non-fiction at Lakeland College.
Tom grew up on a farm in Curlew, Iowa, a town which, at that time, held a hundred residents. He was the eldest of nine children. It was he, the next-eldest brother and his father who did the majority of work on the farm. It was this experience that helped mold Tom into a writer.
"These people are sturdy, strong and enduring," says Tom. "I was getting a sense of who they were and I'm saying, 'I wonder if it's just these people, or is that true across the Middle West?'"
Tom's memoir, a reflection on growing up on the Iowa farm and his return journey called Curlew: Home, came partly out of this fascination, as did his current project entitled Vagabond in the Middle: An Expedition into the Heart of the Middle West.
For Vagabond in the Middle, Tom selected twelve small communities to travel to, none smaller than 2,000 residents and none larger than 10,000. Each of them is inside his definition of the Middle West: from the 84th meridian to the 100th meridian and from the Canadian border to the 39th parallel.
His aim is to find out what it means to be Midwestern through the stories of the people in these communities, a project he is allowing himself more than five years to complete.
"I'm not interested in proving anything about the cities," says Tom. "I want to investigate these Middle Western towns."
Tom packs up, travels to these towns, and asks the residents some questions.
"I ask three initial questions: Why are you here? What were past conditions and future prospects for the community? Can you give me three or four adjectives to describe the character of the people in this community?"
Over the past thirty years he's been publishing poems, essays, memoirs, literary criticisms, creative non-fiction, and has also given workshops in all listed areas. This year he was one of three finalists for the position of Wisconsin Poet Laureate, and is currently teaching creative non-fiction at Lakeland College.
Tom grew up on a farm in Curlew, Iowa, a town which, at that time, held a hundred residents. He was the eldest of nine children. It was he, the next-eldest brother and his father who did the majority of work on the farm. It was this experience that helped mold Tom into a writer.
"These people are sturdy, strong and enduring," says Tom. "I was getting a sense of who they were and I'm saying, 'I wonder if it's just these people, or is that true across the Middle West?'"
Tom's memoir, a reflection on growing up on the Iowa farm and his return journey called Curlew: Home, came partly out of this fascination, as did his current project entitled Vagabond in the Middle: An Expedition into the Heart of the Middle West.
For Vagabond in the Middle, Tom selected twelve small communities to travel to, none smaller than 2,000 residents and none larger than 10,000. Each of them is inside his definition of the Middle West: from the 84th meridian to the 100th meridian and from the Canadian border to the 39th parallel.
His aim is to find out what it means to be Midwestern through the stories of the people in these communities, a project he is allowing himself more than five years to complete.
"I'm not interested in proving anything about the cities," says Tom. "I want to investigate these Middle Western towns."
Tom packs up, travels to these towns, and asks the residents some questions.
"I ask three initial questions: Why are you here? What were past conditions and future prospects for the community? Can you give me three or four adjectives to describe the character of the people in this community?"