Senior-Trask in WyoPoets book

Some people pray. Some consult friends or family. Some toss their fate to the wind and flip a coin. However they choose to deal with them, all people experience “moments of decision” in their lives, and this is the theme of the latest WyoPoets chapbook of poetry, which was released April 22.

Entitled “Labyrinth: Poems from Wyoming and Beyond,” the volume includes 33 poems from 24 different poets, including Encampment’s own Dawn Senior-Trask. Wyoming Poet Laureate A. Rose Hill decided which of 99 entries would be published in “Labyrinth.” “Labyrinth” is the tenth collection published by WyoPoets since the group’s initial anthology “If You Would Love Wyoming” was released in 1993.

Senior-Trask has had her work included in most of these collections, going back to “If You Would Love Wyoming” 23 years ago. She describes “Seduction,” the piece published in “Labyrinth,” as “a short lyric poem.” It’s “a little different from my other poems,” Senior-Trask said. The poet labeled much of her work a “reaction or expression of (her) feelings for nature.”

According to a press release from WyoPoets, Senior-Trask was raised in a log cabin her family built in the Snowy Range. The poet grew up in a creatively-inflected household, with a father who ran the Willoughby Publishing House in Saratoga, and an older brother and sister who both became poets as well. Senior-Trask published her first work at six years old, when her father, Willoughby Senior, printed a collection of the girl’s drawings.

Working in a variety of mediums, Senior-Trask is also an accomplished sculptor and painter. Her pieces can be found for sale in Saratoga’s Black Hawk Gallery, as well as in galleries and private collections across the world. A page run by the artist and poet on the website Fine Art America notes that Senior-Trask has lived among the Navajo, Hopi and Lakota peoples, and that this has informed much of her work.

A special poetry reading celebrating the release of “Labyrinth” was held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 22 at the Riverton Public Library. Copies of the newest collection can be obtained from the WyoPoets website: www.wyopoets.org.