Minnesota Book Award-winning poet Heid Erdrich will be one of six Speed Chatters at MinnPost's Book Club Blast on Sunday. Today's post is the last in our author Q&A series. Big thanks to Audra Otto, who wrote the Qs and edited the As. Check out previous posts in the series here.

MinnPost: Tell us about your most recent collection of poetry.

Heid Erdrich: “National Monuments” -- a somewhat creepy book about bodies and cultural attitudes toward the sacred, came out in late 2008 and was sold out by June 2009.

It has been reprinted and is being taught at several colleges.

I’ve visited a few book clubs to talk about it.

“National Monuments” won the Minnesota Book Award for poetry, which continues to please me enormously.

MP: Which writers have been the strongest influences on your own writing?  

HE: My influences are many, and many are as expected: Plath and Sexton, Whitman and Dickinson. 

I also love Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and have an unhealthy relationship with Robert Frost.

The poets who made me feel I could write were Roberta Hill (Whiteman) and Joy Harjo. I also love Louise Gluck.

MP: What do you love most about living in Minnesota?

HE: Totally clichéd love of lakes to follow:

I grew up in a small town on the prairie with a slow (though annually violent) river running as border between Minnesota and North Dakota.

I loved dreaming as I looked at the river. 

Living in Minneapolis, I finally have my lake to keep me dreaming. 

A poet needs a lake or a river. An interstate will do, but a lake or river is best.

This is a great place to live. There are a few poets in the Twin Cities and we manage to find one another for support. 

Not something that happens everywhere.

What else do I love? 

The Loft. And Thai food.