True-to-life tales of touring with rock bands or facing desire in the North Dakota wilderness don’t necessarily seem like something an English instructor would write about, but poet and ISU associate professor Debra Marquart has made them the focus of her new book, “From Sweetness.”

“The subject matter in this book is deeper than my other material,” Marquart said. “It’s a little bit more serious.”

This is her third release since her 1995 book, “Everything’s a Verb: Poems.” Following that was “The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories” in 2001. Though “From Sweetness” is her latest book, she has been working on bits and pieces of it since “Everything’s A Verb” was released.

“Something will stick in my memory, like an image or a line I heard in passing,” she said. “It’s kind of mysterious how it works.”

Many underlying subjects of her work includes childhood, primarily growing up in a Catholic environment, and movement.

” `From Sweetness’ is primarily about desire; it’s not an easy thing to control,” Marquart said.

Besides the subject of desire, the book also deals with love, life and rock musicians. These are all subjects that Marquart has dealt with. Since the 1970s, she has toured and performed with many rock bands across the country and performs with The Bone People, a jazz-poetry group.

“Debra is a very musically-oriented, performance-oriented writer,” said Fern Kupfer, associate professor of English.

Like Alan Ginsberg before her, Debra Marquart fuses music and free verse poetry in a marriage that is what she views as a closer representation of poetry.

While the writing of Ginsberg may not be a direct influence on her writing, she does cite such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Ricky Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell as inspirations.

“A good writer, like Debra, can write in different venues or be multi-talented in different genres,” Kupfer said.

Compared to her other writings, she described this release as a real leap.

Others have apparently agreed, as the book was awarded the Pearl Poetry Prize, a nation-wide poetry award.