Margot Fortunato Galt •

Between the Houses

The poems in Between the Houses, by Margot Fortunato Galt, describe dreamlike, surreal spaces in her Twin Cities neighborhood. Inspired by the paintings of Minnesota artist Delor Erickson, these poems suggest the play between dream and reality, families and regions, travel and home, art and life. Also included in the book are black-and-white reproductions of some of Erickson’s work.

Praise for Between the Houses

“Margot Fortunato Galt has hit her stride with these poems grounded in ‘the old architecture of desire.’ Through the earliest room, the white room of silence, she opens the door into her own rhythm:

red, dark window, word hand, heart

The heart eventually breaks, after years of poems, into a ‘Late Song’ that knows its ‘spill of joy.’”

— Monica Ochtrup, co-author of What I Cannot Say I Will Say (New Rivers Press, 1996)

About Margot

Margot Galt holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, and teaches in the graduate program at Hamline University in St. Paul. Awards and grants have come to her work from The Loft, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Center for Arts Criticism,

The Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Minnesota Humanities
Commission. She is the author
of six other books, two of which have been nominated for
Minnesota Book Awards.

Prairie Rose Hips: Autumn

Morning opens its mouth

on a haze of pleasure

ready to swallow

that thieving night,

its dreams.

From The Quiet Eye: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Nature (Laurel Collective anthology, 2009)

Margot on Writing Poetry

Poems begin in intensity.
A line shapes itself in my head. Something in the outside world compels an inner voice to arrange itself on the page. Poetry begins in verbal music and the bird of the heart fluttering to be let out.

From The Double Meaning of Yield: Laurel Poets on Writing Poetry