Jo McDougall Reading and Signing Events
For Daddy’s Money: a Memoir of Farm and Family
I will be making a number of appearances over the next few months for readings and signings of For Daddy's Money: A Memoir of Farm and Family.

To view the dates, times, and locations, click here.

Upcoming Event:
January 27, 2012 Jo and Al Ortolani will read at Raven Books in Lawrence, Kansas
8 East 7th St. 7:00 p.m.

Surprise Is What We Live For....
Life surprises. That’s why I write—to record those surprises, to stop them in time. Poetry offers a deeper look into the absurdities of the world-- the juxtapositions of tragedy and joy, the fantastical and the mundane—than one sees on the surface.

I eavesdrop on people. I want their stories, the ones they tell and the ones they don’t. I like a sense of place. I want to know, in a poem, where I am standing. And I sometimes like a touch of sleaze.

When I write, I want my poems to connect with the reader. When I read, I want a poem that asks me to take it home in the palm of my hand.

Jo McDougall

What We Need
It is just as well we do not see
in the shadows behind the hasty tent
of the Allen Brothers Greatest Show,
Lola the Lion Tamer and the Great Valdini
in Nikes and jeans
sharing a tired cigarette
before she girds her wrists with glistening amulets
and snaps the tigers into rage,
before he adjusts the glimmering cummerbund
and makes from air
the white and trembling doves, the pair.

-- from Dirt, Autumn House Press

What I Do