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South Dakota Poetry

The SDSU Archives and Special Collections houses the South Dakota State Poetry Society's records and the papers of state poet laureates David Allan Evans and Audrae Visser. In addition, it also includes poetry books written by numerous South Dakota poets, including Badger Clark, Lee Ann Roripaugh and Christine Stewart-Nuñez.

Below are links to inventories of the poetry collections in the archives.


South Dakota State Poetry Society Digital Collection

In 2021, the Archives received a grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council to digitize Pasque Petals and other publications of the South Dakota State Poetry Society. Through this grant, student assistants scanned and transcribed the pages, making the publications more accessible to audiences around South Dakota and the world.

The South Dakota Humanities Council is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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See the digital collection on DLSD


Pasque Petals

First Page from the first issue of Pasque Petals - transcript next to the the image

Pasque Petals is the literary magazine of the South Dakota State Poetry Society. The magazine was first published in May 1926. The following is from the first page of the first issue and explains why the magazine started:

WHY A SOUTH DAKOTA POETRY MAGAZINE?

A territory comparing favorably in size with major countries of Europe, and settled by a people

selected for emigration because of their vision, courage and resourcefulness, ought to be able to produce a worthwhile literature.

Consider! Our people have lived through the most dramatic of all recorded adventures. Only

recently the writer spoke to a woman who, on arriving in this state, drove forty miles over the trackless prairies, behind an ox team, to reach her destination. She spent her first winter in a sod house with bare earth for a floor. The only fuel available was hay, which she helped tie into knots to better hold the fire. Now she lives in a modern house, drives a modern car over the thousands of miles of fine roads of which the state boasts. Never before has it been given human beings to see such a change in social, economic and industrial life.

If ever the stage was set for the production of a great literature, it is now set in South Dakota. But we shall never produce a great literature as long as we cower before the literary critics of other sections and countries. If we are to produce a great literature we must have our own writers who submit their works to our own critics, for publication in our own papers, for circulation among our own people. We must set our own high standards-such standards, that our native poets will consider it as great an honor to have our own magazines print their verses as to have an "outside" magazine print them. And we must train our readers so that our poets will consider it as great a triumph to please the reading public of our own immediate territory as to pass the censorship of an eastern critic, whose long absence from black earth, scorching sun, numbing cold, primeval passions and creative labor makes him unsympathetic in the judging of our literature.

PASQUE PETALS, our South Dakota Poetry Magazine, is a mere infant-a foundling left on your door step. Refuse it the consideration due, and it will perish; grant it support, spiritual and material, and it will grow in strength and maturity, and none dares to prophecy to what grandeur of beauty and usefulness it may attain.

-The Editors.

Access Issues of Pasque Petals

Volume 1, 1926-1927

Volume 2, 1927-1928

Volume 3, 1928-1929

Volume 4, 1929-1930

Volume 5, 1930-1931

Volume 6, 1931-1932

Volume 7, 1932-1933

Volume 8, 1933-1934

Volume 9, 1934-1935

Volume 10, 1935-1936

Volume 11, 1936-1937

Volume 12, 1937-1938

Volume 13, 1938-1939

Volume 14, 1939-1940

Volume 15, 1940-1941

Volume 16, 1941-1942

Volume 17, 1942-1943

Volume 18, 1943-1944

Volume 19, 1944-1945

Volume 20, 1945-1946

Volume 21, 1946-1947

Volume 22, 1947-1948

Volume 23, 1948-1949

Volume 24, 1949-1950

Volume 25, 1950-1951

Volume 26, 1951-1952

Volume 27, 1952-1954

Volume 28, 1953-1954

Volume 29, 1954-1955

Volume 30, 1955-1956

Volume 31, 1956-1957

Volume 32, 1957-1958

Volume 33, 1958-1959

Volume 34, 1959-1960

Volume 35, 1960-1961

Volume 36, 1961-1962

Volume 37, 1962-1963

Volume 38, 1963-1964

Volume 39, 1964-1965

Volume 40, 1965-1966

Volume 41, 1966-1967

Volume 42, 1967-1968

Volume 43, 1968-1969

Volume 44, 1969-1970

Volume 45, 1970-1971

Volume 46, 1971-1972

Volume 47, 1972-1973

Volume 48, 1973-1974

Volume 49, 1974-1975

Volume 50, 1975-1976

Volume 51, 1976-1977

Volume 52, 1977-1978

Volume 53, 1978-1979

Volume 54, 1970-1980

Volume 55, 1980-1981

Volume 56, 1981-1982

Volume 57, 1982-1983

Volume 58, 1983-1984

Volume 59, 1984-1985

Volume 60, 1985-1986

Volume 61, 1986-1987

Volume 62, 1987-1988

Volume 63, 1988-1989

Volume 64, 1989-1990

Volume 65, 1990-1991

Volume 66, 1991-1992

Volume 67, 1992-1993

Volume 68, 1993-1994

Volume 69, 1994-1995

Volume 70, 1995-1996

Volume 71, 1996-1997

Volume 72, 1997-1998

Volume 73, 1998-1999

Volume 74, 1999-2000

Volume 75, 2000-2001

Volume 76, 2001-2002

Volume 77, 2002-2003

Volume 78, 2003-2004

Volume 79, 2004-2005

Volume 80, 2005-2006

Volume 81, 2006-2007

Volume 82, 2007-2008

Volume 83, 2008-2009

Volume 84, 2009-2010

Volume 85, 2010-2011

Volume 86, 2011-2012

Volume 87, 2012

Volume 88, 2013

Volume 89, 2015-2016

Volume 90, 2017-2021