[Zoom] Q&A session with Kathleen Heideman ⚒️ author of The Caving Grounds Poems
UP Notable Book Club presents a Q&A session with Kathleen Heideman ⚒️ author of The Caving Grounds Poems
UP Notable Book Club: The Crystal Falls Community District Library, in partnership with the U.P. Publishers & Authors Association (UPPAA), has scheduled author events with winners of the UP Notable Book List. The 64th event features Kathleen Heideman, author of The Caving Grounds poem cycle. Her book, the 4th in the award-winning Yooper Poetry Series, excavates the rubble of Negaunee, a small town in Upper Michigan hollowed by a century of mining. The extraction of hematite caused underground collapses and sinkholes; undermined neighborhoods were deemed unstable; homes, churches, and even cemeteries were moved, and dangerous areas fenced. Thankfully, a guide will emerge: Rusty. The author will read excerpts from the book and participate in a Q&A with the book club audience on Zoom.
When: Thursday, November 12, 2026 07:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central
How: Everyone is invited to join the Book Club by using the sign-up form on the sidebar of www.UPNotable.com and entering your name and email contact. You’ll automatically receive an exclusive Zoom link a week prior to the event.
We recommend borrowing a copy of The Caving Grounds from your local library or purchasing one from your local bookseller in advance to get the most out of these events.
KATHLEEN M. HEIDEMAN is the author of A Brief Report on the Human Animal and Psalms of the Early Anthropocene. A writer/artist/environmentalist working in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she has completed residencies with the National Park Service, watersheds, research stations, private foundations, and the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. Drawn to wild and threatened places, she works to defend them as a board member of the Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition. Heideman received the “Freshwater Heroes” award from Freshwater Future, and has a handful of Pushcart nominations — her other hand is full of moss. Curious woman.
‘Kathleen M. Heideman’s poetry collection The Caving Grounds is almost impossible to describe. You must experience it for yourself to fully understand the riches to be mined from it, but I will try to give a flavor of it. Imagine placing an iron ore pellet you have found beside a railroad track in your mouth and rolling it around so your tongue feels the texture of every curve. Then digest it, let is stick inside you, slowly working its way through until it becomes part of you. Then go live in Negaunee for a century and a half, let your house be covered with red dust, and dig up your ancestors and move them across a railroad track so you can mine beneath them. Do all that, and you might get some sense of the original experience that awaits you upon reading this book.
Unfortunately, few of us can or will do all that. And those of us not from Negaunee can only try to understand the full context of what this book conveys. Fortunately, Kathleen lets us know upfront what is important to know. She gives us a prefatory quiz with blanks to fill in (and answers below) so we get the major facts like how Chief Maji-gesik helped the white men discover the iron ore in the first place, and geological details. As the book continues, we learn how a cemetery was really moved so it could be mined beneath, how so many mines were dug beneath the town that fear rose that people’s houses would sink in, leaving to homes being moved, the caving grounds roped off, and now in recent years, them being reopened.
Heideman also introduces us to Rusty, who becomes our guide, but he is like no other tour guide. Yes, he’ll give us a walking tour of the caving grounds. But he’s a mythical being, as metaphorically big in regards to mining as Paul Bunyan is to logging. As timeless as Merlin, he is able to disappear and return at will. Sometimes it seems the iron ore might be finally exhausted so he leaves, but who’s to say the ore is all gone—we can always look for more, and then Rusty might return. Sometimes Rusty’s seated on a barstool waiting to give the next tour, sometimes he’s running the widowmaker or using a pickax in the 1850s.” — Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar
Read the rest of the story on U.P. Book Review
More information about the U.P. Notable Book list, U.P. Book Review, and UPPAA can be found on www.UPNotable.com