The Bees of the Invisible

Wally Swist is the author of over forty books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. Among his books are The Daodejing: A New Interpretation, with co-authors, David Breeden and Steven Schroeder (Beaumont, TX: Lamar University Press, 2015). His book Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love was selected as the co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa; the book was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012, and was nominated for a National Book Award. Swist is the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize for A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems and Haiku Regarding Birds & Nature. The book was published in late 2019 by master printer and book designer Gabriel Rummonds, of Bainbridge Island, Washington. He has also published five previous books of poetry with Shanti Arts, of Brusnwick, Maine, including Candling the Eggs (2016), The Map of Eternity (2018), The Bees of the Invisible (2019), Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), and Awakening & Visitation (2020) . His books of nonfiction include Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2018), On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (New York & Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2018), and A Writer's Statements on Beauty: New and Selected Essays and Reviews (Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts, 2021). Some of Swist's work has been set to music. This includes his poem "The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind," which inspired a composition by the electroacoustic composer Dr. Elainie Lillios. The composition was performed by percussionist Scott Deal in Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 20, 2013. It is only one of several venues across the country where the composition has been performed. Dr. Elainie Lillios is Professor of Composition at Bowling Green State University. His poem "After Long Drought" was also composed to an electroacoustical score written by Professor Lillios, and the composition was also premiered at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music, in June 2016 by percussionist Scott Deal. A recipient of Artist's Fellowships in poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1977 and 2003), Swist was also awarded a one-year writing residency (1998) and two back-to-back one-year writing residencies (2003-2005) at Fort Juniper, the Robert Francis Homestead, in Cushman, Massachusetts, the home of his former mentor. Swist's poetry and prose have appeared in such national periodicals as Buddhist Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Commonweal, Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation, The North American Review, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Rattle, Rolling Stone, Today's American Catholic, Transference: A Literary Journal Featuring the Art & Process of Translation, The Woven Tale Press: The Web's Premier Online Literary and Fine Art Magazine, Your Impossible Voice, and Yankee Magazine. He currently makes his home in New England, where he continues to write and translate. Although he is semi-retired, he works as a freelance editor, writer, and researcher.