MICHAEL BURWELL
Poet, Editor, Researcher
Poetry Books
Mike Burwell’s poems remind me of movement of a glacial river, powerful and true. This is the work of a mature poet, one who is sure of his craft and his place in the world. Cartography of Water is a most welcome addition to Alaskan literature.
Tom Sexton
University of Alaska Press
The poems of Michael Burwell in North and West are intersections with the planet—with rain and stone and stars, with fir logs and salt beach tang. Love songs to women are intentionally confused with love songs to the earth and all her splendors…Burwell has his own voice fully formed—unusual for a first book…North and West is a little gem that can be read over and over…
Ann Chandonnet
The Anchorage Times
POEMS ONLINE
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Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment
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Ice Flow: New and Selected Poems
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Braided Streams Poem Anthology
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Cartography of Water at U of Chicago Press
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Gray Line Alaska: 17 Best Books Set in Alaska
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YouTube
READINGS
Ships and Shipwrecks
Aleutian Voices
A National Park Service Publication based on Michael Burwell's two-part history "The SS Northwestern: The Ship That Always Came Back" published in The Sea Chest, Journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, September/December 1995 and the the graphics and supplemental text of Francis Broderick.
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The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Alaska Shipwreck Table provides the most comprehensive compilation of Alaskan shipwrecks to date. The table is a list of shipwrecks that have occurred in Alaska from earliest Russian times (1741) to the 2000. This table was compiled from an extensive literature search by Michael Burwell before he retired from BOEM in 2011.
A Book in Progress
Forthcoming in 2018
From Myth to Relic to Meaning:
The Russian Steamer Politkofsky
THE RUSSIAN STEAMER POLITKOFSKY
From Myth to Relic to Meaning
(Working Title)
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The book will be based on these 4 articles published in the Sea Chest in 1998.
CLICK HERE to view PDFs.
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The 1871 Whaling Project describes the search for the remains of 32 Yankee whaling ships that wrecked off Alaska’s Arctic Coast in September of 1871. This paper describes the results of three summer field seasons from 2005-2008 staged north of Wainwright, Alaska searching for onshore artifacts and side-scan sonar surveys near shore. An analysis of artifact types and their onshore distribution is also presented.
RESEARCH ONLINE
MARITIME RESEARCH
(Co-author of this book)
The SS Northwestern:
The Ship That Always Came Back Pt.1 & Pt. 2
Published in The Sea Chest
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The Russian Steamer Politkofsky: Teacher's Resource Guide
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Shipwrecks of Alaska's Lynn Canal​
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CULTURAL ANTHRO
PAPERS
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The 1976 Decline of the
Contested Constructions of Ecological Knowledge
Hunger Knows No Law: Seminal Native Protest and The Barrow Duck-In of 1961
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Climate Change Modeling and Future Response Strategies: Globalism and Indigenous Agency at Odds in the Arctic
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Cirque Journal
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Cirque was founded in 2009 by poet Mike Burwell. A regional literary journal published in Anchorage, Alaska, Cirque invites emerging and established writers living in the North Pacific Rim—Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia, and Chukotka—to submit their art, photography, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays, interviews, and book reviews. Cirque’s intent is to share the best writing in the region with the rest of the world.
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