With a poet’s facility for understanding languages and an artist’s keen eye for observation, West Virginia native Randi Ward communicates across international and cultural barriers and documents the people and natural settings that she encounters in Scandinavia and her home country.

The gifted poet and talented photographer appeared at Lunch With Books at the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling Tuesday, July 14. Ward, 33, spoke of the ethnographic fieldwork she conducted in the Faroe Islands and related how it inspired her debut photo-poetry collection, “Meditations on Salt.”

Ward read three poems – first in the native language, then in English – about her experiences in the Faroe Islands. She also read several short poems from “Whipstitches,” a collection to be released this year.

Extolling the value of poetry, Ward said that when reading a poem, one engages in critical thinking and gains an appreciation for how language is used. “All those skills are applicable to everyday life,” she said.

West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman of Wheeling introduced Ward to the library audience. Harshman met her when they served as judges for the state Poetry Out Loud competition in Charleston in March.

Showing a photograph of a weathered old cow shed, Ward said she is drawn to things in a state of decay showing “a special sense of beauty and integrity.”

Ward, who grew up on a farm in Belleville, W.Va., was introduced to Scandinavia at age 16, when she spent a year as an exchange student in Norway. After graduating from Parkersburg South High School, she entered Ohio University, Athens, and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology in 2004.

She spent one undergraduate year studying at the University of Southern Denmark. During that time abroad, she visited the Faroe Islands and became fascinated with Faroese chain dancing.

Ward returned to the islands in August 2004 and enrolled at the University of the Faroe Islands, earning a Master of Arts degree in cultural studies in 2007. She lived in Torshavn and Nolsoy and visited every village on the islands many times, observing Faroese dancing and interviewing hundreds of residents.

By living among the people, Ward made bonds that other anthropologists don’t make. “It was important for me to live in a village – to see how the economy had changed and how the village had changed,” she said.

Ballads sung during chain dancing tell ancient stories that are an integral part of the nation, Ward explained. “In all of the villages, dancing used to be a normal part of everyday life,” with residents spending their evenings at dances.

While singing the ballads and dancing, “you get the rhythm in your feet,” she related. “It’s an unusual experience of poetry. You really embody the dance.”

She added, “These ballads are hundreds and hundreds of verses long … Everyone has their own ballad that passes down through the family … The leader has hundreds of verses memorized. Everyone else joins in on the refrains,” Ward said.

Faroese dancing offers “a core metaphor to learning about other parts of the society,” she said. “Dance was part of a larger spectrum of the way life functions there. It was an entry point for me to study other things,” she said.

After leaving the Faroe Islands in 2009, Ward lived in Iceland for three years. Showing photographs she took there, she remarked, “I tend to gravitate to things that are broken … I like seeing what the elements can do to things.”