Hazners, Dainis 1957-

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Hazners, Dainis 1957-

PERSONAL:

Surname is pronounced "die-nis"; born January 22, 1957, in East Orange, NJ; son of Vitauts and Brigita Hazners. Ethnicity: "Latvian." Education: University of Rochester, B.A. (cum laude), 1980; University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, M.F.A., 1982.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Story, WY. E-mail—dainis@ fiberpipe.net.

CAREER:

IKAN Contracting, Rochester, NY, self-employed carpenter, painter, and handyman, 1983-87; subsistence farmer in Story, WY, 1987—. Book Shop, Sheridan, WY, partner, 1988-98; former teacher of enrichment programs in poetry to elementary and high school students in Wyoming and Idaho; former director of a summer writers' camp for high school students.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Wyoming Arts Council, fellowships, 1992, 1998, and Neltje Blanchan Memorial Award for nature literature, 1994; poetry fellow, National Endowment for the Arts, 1999; Iowa Poetry Prize, University of Iowa Press, 2003, for (Some of) The Adventures of Carlyle, My Imaginary Friend.

WRITINGS:

(Some of) The Adventures of Carlyle, My Imaginary Friend (poetry), University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 2004.

Work represented in anthologies, including Deep West: A Literary Tour of Wyoming, Wyoming Arts Council, 2003. Contributor of poetry and nonfiction to periodicals, including Plains Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Winds, Connecticut River Review, South Florida Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Crab Creek Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dainis Hazners told CA: "Most of the Carlyle poems were composed while jogging. Different lines arranged themselves in my mind (I wouldn't say I heard voices, but rather that I made no effort to restrain my imagination), which I then wrote down in a small composition book that just fits in my pocket. I forget how many of those were filled. The poems were transferred, with minor revisions, to yellow legal pads. This went on for a little over three years. Then I typed that material into the computer and printed out about 200 pages on legal-size paper, single-spaced. By that time I was exhausted and set everything aside for over a year, at which time I went back and began deleting, arriving at approximately one hundred pages. I went to the local copy/printer's shop and had them bind a couple of copies with black plastic spiral and pale gray cover stock, which I decorated with gold paint (it must have been real gold; one quart, of which I used very little, cost forty-five dollars). About a year later my part-time employee (an aspiring poet named Ben Whol) and I were on our way to the dump with junk when he began reading out loud from the manuscript (that I had ‘accidentally’ left on the seat of the pickup truck) with great enthusiasm. This finally caused me to decide the manuscript wasn't half-bad and to think that perhaps I should send it out, which I proceeded to do, and was surprised and thrilled when the University of Iowa Press chose it for the Iowa Poetry Prize."