Margaret Hasse

Margaret Hasse grew up in Vermillion, South Dakota, a small town near the Missouri River. After graduating from Sanford University, she returned to the Midwest to write, teach, and work as an editor and writing mentor in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hasse is the author of six full-length collections of poems: Summoned (2021), Earth’s Appetite (2013), Between Us (2016), Milk and Tides (2008), In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling  (1993), and Stars Above, Stars Below (1985).  

About Summoned, poet and editor James Crews writes: "How lucky that Margaret Hasse was 'summoned' to write this new collection of poems, which reckons with everything from race and family (especially in her 'Another Day of Being White' series) to aging and the many betrayals of the body. Throughout decades of writing companionable and necessary poems, it’s striking that Hasse has never once lost her ability to draw readers into the joy of a moment like the one she describes in 'Night on the Town': 'We orbit like planets, following strangers/in bright coats who also follow us/blowing blue clouds of breath into the night.' At their heart, each of these poems is about relationship and intimacy, and all the ways we can’t help but 'orbit' each other in this troubled, beautiful world."

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hasse collaborated with watercolor artist Sharon DeMark to create an ekphrastic collection of poetry and paintings about things that provide refuge. The work, titled Shelter, was published in 2020. Hasse's latest publication is the chapbook The Call of Glacier Park (2022).

Hasse has been active as a community poet, teaching in poets-in-the-schools and correctional institutions, leading poetry workshops, collaborating with artists and arts organizations, and reading, performing, and making poetry presentations. Her work has been featured in anthologies, including Where One Voice Ends, Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry, and To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women’s Voices from Pre-Territorial Day to the Present, magazines, broadsides, and unusual places such as sidewalks, public transportation, and Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.

The National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, Loft Literary Center’s Career Initiative Program, Minnesota State Arts Board, and Jerome Foundation have all supported Hasse's life in poetry.