David Salner, Author

Just Published: Influence of Melville's Co-workers

2011-11-22T14:46:00.000-08:00

A unique view of the influence of Melville's sailing co-workers on his writing. Follow this link http://www.ilrmagazine.net/articles.php

Garrison Keillor reads "On the Iron Range"

2011-01-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

On January 2, Garrison Keillor read "On the Iron Range," a poem from Working Here, on his radio show Writer's Almanac. To listen, follow this link
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/author.php?auth_id=2592

"Working Here" published by Minnesota State University's Rooster Hill Press

2010-11-18T15:47:00.000-08:00

The title poem and other poems in David Salner’s second poetry collection, Working Here, is based on his life as an iron ore miner during the 1980s depression in steel and mining. Salner says of this period of devastating layoffs: “The desolation of those times—and also the lonely beauty—still haunts me. Those memories have come back to me with the current economic crisis.”

David Salner, Author

2009-04-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

David Salner is the author of JOHN HENRY'S PARTNER SPEAKS (Word Tech, Cincinnati) and WORKING HERE (Rooster Hill Press, Minnesota State University). Deeply influenced by the people he knew during the 25 years he worked at manual trades, Salner believes that “poetry, first and foremost among art forms, derives its creative impulse from the lives of ordinary working people. It should be a lively art form, based on the good nature and genius of humanity.”
Salner left the academic world in 1970, after completing an MFA degree at the University of Iowa Writers’ workshop. He became an activist in the anti-Vietnam war movement, a lifelong socialist, and participant in civil rights, women’s rights, and labor struggles. He has lived all over the country and worked as a longshoreman, bus driver, iron ore miner, power plant laborer, furnace tender, machinist, and garment worker.
Since returning to poetry, his work has appeared in North American Review, Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Witness, New South, Evansville Review, Southern Humanities Review, Literary Review, Margie, Green Mountains Review and dozens of other other publications.