Visibility: Ten Miles is a collaboration of poetry and photography between Shanon Chmielarz, poet, and Ken Smith, photographer. Both are well acquainted with the prairie; hence these photos and poems included not only grasslands but also the unusual only insiders have seen. These images come from two angles, what the eye sees and what the heart responds to. The title suggests the ability on the prairie to see in distances of miles, not of city blocks or minutes. Here it can suggest something more lies ahead which is unseen. And that is what this book brings to the reader – what might be unseen or unremembered or not yet imagined to the eye.
The majority of the photographs where taken in North Dakota, but the collection also includes scenes from South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska.
About the author and photographer:
Sharon (Grenz) Chmielarz, born and raised in Mobridge, South Dakota, has had eight books of poetry published. Love from The Yellowstone Trail has been called “uniquely American,” “finely crafted,” “powerful,” “a joy to read.” She has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, nominated serveral times for a Pushcart Prize and featured on American Life in Poetry.
Ken Smith, a native of western Colorado, lives in North Dakota, where he and his wife, Robin, raised six children. Ken holds an M.A. and D.A. in history from the University of North Dakota. After teaching high school and college, he is attending North Dakota State University, working toward a Ph.D. in Great Plains History.
Comments about the book:
"In Visibility: Ten Miles,Sharon Chmielarz and Ken Smith cultivate what Bill Holm called the prairie eye – the voice of the grassland, the struggle of the trees, the complexities of Midwestern weather, and the melancholy must of roots."
--- Debra Marquart, author of The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere
“Poet Sharon Chmielarz and photographer Ken Smith, the contributors to Visibility: Ten Miles, are much alike. They have depth of field, alternating long views and close-ups. The result is something more than a fair likeness of the prairies they see and sing.”
--- Tom Isern, Director, Center for Heritage Renewal, Professor of History
University Distinguished Professor, NDSU, Fargo
