Poet of war
Retired Air Force nurse turns to verse

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — On the surface, the solitary life of a poet would seem to have not much in common with the life of a nurse or the life of a military servicewoman.

But like braiding different threads to make a cord, Beth Keough McDonald is combining those three disparate life experiences to form her current life as a writer.

McDonald, a retired U.S. Air Force nurse and the former director of the Gallup Veterans’ Clinic, currently spends much of her time writing poems — often about experiences in her life like nursing, her time in the military, or her life in Gallup.

On Tuesday, McDonald will be in Tucson for a Veterans Day launch party for “Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq,” a first-ever collection of prose and poetry by women who have served in the military. McDonald, who has three poems in the volume, will be giving a public reading, along with several other contributors to the book.

Published by Kore Press of Tucson, the book features a forward written by Helen Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University. Benedict writes: “Women tell different war stories than men. They tend to be less in thrall to the masculine posturing that so many military men feel compelled to perpetuate ... As a result, there is little swagger in this collection, but a lot of soul searching.”

That seems applicable to McDonald, who in a recent interview was reluctant to talk about her military experience other than to describe it as difficult. McDonald said she was an active duty nurse from 1988 to 1991, and prior to that she served as a flight nurse in the reserves. During the first Gulf War, she explained, she worked stateside at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, treating soldiers injured in the war.

Writing is a subject McDonald is more comfortable discussing. She has studied under Natalie Goldberg of “Writing Down the Bones” fame, and essayist and poet Linda M. Hasselstrom, a well-respected writer from the grasslands of western South Dakota. Hasselstrom has been particularly influential, said McDonald, who explained she attends writing retreats each summer at Hasselstrom’s ranch.

“She’s a pretty cut-and-dried poet,” McDonald said of Hasselstrom, whom she describes as her editor, reviewer, mentor, teacher, and friend.

That approach to writing agrees with McDonald. “I’m not a poet that people can’t understand,” she said of her own work. Readers don’t have to have a dictionary, she added, to read her poetry.

In addition to the poems published in “Powder,” McDonald has had poems published in other collections. Her poem “The Ramah’s Farmers Market” was published in “Crazy Woman Creek/Women Rewrite the American West”; “Summer Vacation,” a poem set during the Vietnam era, was published in “Looking Back to Place”; and “Bataan Angels,” a poem about U.S. nurses who served in the Philippines during World War II, was published in “Intensive Care,” a book of prose and poetry by nurses.

McDonald said she is currently working on three collections of her poetry. “I try to work every day,” she said. “Sometimes it gets lonely.”

Unless people write poetry or read it, McDonald said, few individuals in the local community have much understanding of what a poet does. “It’s not like a visual artist selling a painting,” she explained.

Although McDonald and a few others have tried to start local poetry groups, host open mic events, and bring in poetry slam teams from other cities, McDonald admitted that the subject is a bit of a hard sell in Gallup. As a result, she travels to Albuquerque several times a year to read her work before a live audience at poetry events.

McDonald already has a couple of public readings scheduled for next year. One will be held in conjunction with the Aspen Guard Station Artist-in-Residence Program she participated in this past summer in southwestern Colorado. Sponsored by the Dolores Public Lands Office, the program gave McDonald the opportunity to work on her poetry during a stay in an historic 1930s cabin located about 12 miles north of Mancos. The program is open each year to interested artists, writers, and teachers, McDonald said, and is always looking for new participants.

While poetry books aren’t likely to ever become best sellers, McDonald believes her life experiences are helping her find her niche in the small market of poetry. “You write about what you know,” she said, “where you are.”