Matt Mason
Nebraska Poet
Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and Executive director of the Nebraska Writers Collective. Matt told us that poetry should be fun and enjoyed.
Matt Mason, Nebraska State Poet said that poem’s tell stories about communities, culture, people and everyday life. Poetry is fun and he has fun with it.
He read one entitled Kincaid’s for Summer which tells about the Kincaid’s that we see during the summer months. His project as the State’s Poet was to go to all 93 counties within a year and do readings. But COVID-19 came along and that stopped him from visiting all the counties. Since 2019 he has visited 32 or 33 of the 93 counties and hoped to finish up before his five years is up as the State’s Poet.
He read one that he wrote about last year entitled, “Eight Beautiful Things Last Year.” It told about the many different things that we experienced while being shutdown and how we coped with the virus.
Matt said poetry is something to enjoy. If you think back to yesteryear, many of the poems written rhymed, but after the 1920’s or 1930’s some poets went to free verse. Most of Matt’s poems are done in free verse. Today you might find some poems that rhyme and others done in free verse.
Another poem he read was “As We Enter the Afterward.” This poem deals with the time between COVID-19 shots that many got and before this new surge of COVID-19. Matt wrote this in June and it took him between 1 hour for the first draft and 20 hours to get it polished the way he wanted it to read.
Sometime next year, Matt, will have a new book out that connections his live with Disneyland (the one located in California). It isn’t really about Disneyland, but about what Matt saw when he visited Disneyland when he was a little boy and some of the research, he did visiting it later in life. He did read one that will be in the book entitled, “Fantasy and Tomorrow.”
Matt was commissioned to do a poem about the “highest point” in Nebraska for the Kimball Visitors Center. He pointed out that the highest point is near Kimball, NE and to reach it you traveled, dirt and gravel roads. The title of this poem is “Standing at the Highest Point.”
There is another poem called “Homestead” which tells about the homes-built years ago. Matt mentioned that there are many places in Nebraska that you could write poems about, including the landscapes in Nebraska.