Michigan Tech University photo M. Bartley Seigel, an associate professor of creative writing and literature at Michigan Tech University, is among five finalists for the position of U.P. Poet Laureate for 2021-23.

HOUGHTON — Ask the average writing student which form of writing they despise most, poetry would likely be on the list. However, ask Michigan Tech associate professor M. Bartley Seigel, and you get a very different answer. For Seigel, poetry has been something he has been working on for longer than even he seems to realize.

“I’ve been a publishing poet for the last, I don’t know, 15 years of my life,” he said. “I had a book of poetry come out back in 2013. I kind of made my bread and butter as a literary magazine editor, and as a teacher of creative writing, but I’ve always been pretty low-key.”

Seigel is the first to admit that while he loves writing, it has not always been his focus.

“I’ve never been a hugely productive writer,” Seigel said. “I mean, we don’t have to shake the bush very hard to find poets that are putting out a book a year. That’s certainly not me. I’m a nose-to-the-grindstone poet, and it’s certainly nice to be recognized for my efforts. It’s very humbling to be in this run and in this group of people.”

Seigel, along with April Lindala of Marquette, Beverly Matherne of Ishpeming-Marquette, Rosalie Sanara Petrouske of Marquette-Munising and Tyler Dettloff of Marquette-Bay Mills-Sault Ste. Marie, make up the five finalists for U.P. Poet Laureate for 2021-22, a two-year term. The U.P. Poet Laureate is the brainchild of organizer Ron Riekki, who as Seigel puts it, is a “literary provocateur.”

“He’s edited quite a few anthologies of U.P. writing,” said Seigel when discussing Riekki’s role in driving U.P. writers to be seen outside the area, “a couple with Michigan State press, and a couple with Wayne State press. He’s just really been a mover and shaker in the kind of the regional literary community. Back in, it would have been probably 2012, he came up with this idea of having a U.P. Poet Laureate. Through kind of sheer force of will, I think, (he) got the program up off the ground.”

While Seigel, in recent years, has settled into his role as associate professor of creative writing and literature at Michigan Tech University while also serving as director of the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center, he grew up in Montcalm County, which lies southwest of Mt. Pleasant. Carrying a population of 63,342 as of the 2010 census, Montcalm is very similar to the Copper Country.

“Montcalm County is pretty poor, and it’s pretty rural,” said Seigel. “Growing up, my neighbor, my nearest neighbor, was a mile away. My folks had a spread out in the middle of the woods. I grew up tramping around the countryside, hunting and fishing and hiking and doing all that stuff.”

Seigel had visited the U.P. as a tourist growing up, but it wasn’t until 2005 that he found a home in the Keweenaw after earning his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Michigan University and his MFA in creative writing from Penn State University.

Being quick with words has always been a strong suit for Seigel.

“I discovered in an early age that words were a pretty powerful tool for me, anyway, a lot more powerful than my fists or the other means of expressing myself that I had at my disposal,” he said. “I took the writing right away. I was always pretty mean with my mouth, both figuratively and literally. I was quick with words and I was good as a kid at kind of shutting down trouble with my mouth and creating a fair amount of trouble for myself. My mouth has always kind of tended to get away from me.

“Poetry is kind of an extension of that trouble. I didn’t come back to poetry as certainly as a profession, until after graduate school. I’d worked as a journalist briefly, and I went to graduate school as a nonfiction writer. I sort of had aspirations to be a kind of a Barry Lopez-type naturalist and science writer. When I got out of school, I really started kind of writing in earnest and trying to get published. Poetry just kept kind of floating to the surface. My writing kept getting shorter, and it kept getting more lyric. It kept getting more figurative. Eventually, one day, I just realized that the only thing I was publishing was poetry, so I was probably a poet.”

He wrote his first book of poetry about growing up in Montcalm County, these days, his writing focuses on the Keweenaw, along with life as a husband and a father.

“My poetry runs the gamut,” he said. “I mean I write about being a dad. I’ve written about being a husband and I’ve written love poems, death poems and poems about saunas and whatnot. Increasingly, I find that, throughout my work, I’ve always been a place-based poet. I find increasingly that the Upper Peninsula and in particular, the Keweenaw and the Copper Country, Lake Superior, are kind of inextricable from my writing.”

Recently, Seigel has been trying to tackle topics like the Black Lives Matter movement, national politics, and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he is discovering that even in trying to address these national issues, the U.P. remains ever present in his thoughts.

“Even when I’m writing about things that take me kind of far away from who I am, or from the place where I live, the U.P. is always still there,” said Seigel. “It’s always the place out of which I write, and it’s the setting for, and the home for, most of my poems.”

The announcement of the U.P. Poet Laureate will be made during an upcoming Media Meet on PBS in early February.