John Calvin Rezmerski

A Pennsylvania native, he has lived in Minnesota since 1967, where he recently retired as Writer-in-Residence at Gustavus Adolphus College. Besides publication in literary magazines and anthologies, his poetry has appeared in periodicals as diverse as The Wall Street Journal, Twin Cities, Nursing Outlook, religious publications and science fiction magazines. He has long been committed to bringing poetry to varied audiences, both in publication and performance. In the 1970s he led Minnesota Poetry Outloud, taking groups of poets to perform in parks, bars, nursing homes, and small-town festivals.

A storyteller, and occasionally an actor, in 1993 he collaborated with a troupe of performers on Chin Music and Dirty Sermons, a live-to-tape program of his poems, sketches and stories, with music by Michael Croswell. In 2001, he adapted some of that material into a one-act play produced at the Jon Hassler Theater. He has received the Devins Award, an NEA fellowship, and the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. He is a member of the League of Minnesota Poets.

John Calvin Rezmerski’s most recent publications are

What Do I Know? New and Selected Poems
(Holy Cow! Press, 2000)

and the chapbooks
The Sheriff Next Day Answers the Reporter
(Red Dragonfly Press, 2002),

and Counting Sheep: Revised and Enlarged Edition
(Bootless Publications, 2003).