Karen Kelsay – A Motley Vision

Peculiar Pages at Sunstone West

This Saturday at Claremont Graduate University, Sunstone West, a small tidier Sunstone Symposium, will feature panels about two Peculiar Pages book. (Note that times and participants are subject to clarification.)

The first, Monsters & Mormons, accomplished with the help of A Motley Vision and the most fun currently available in print. Participating authors Erik Peterson (“Bichos”) and Brian Gibson (“The Eye Opener”) will be talking about their works as well as reading their own and others’ stories. Responding to their presentation will be Patrick Q. Mason, the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and Associate Professor of North American Religion at Claremont, and the author of The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Also featured are several poets from Fire in the Pasture. Featuring editor, poet, and AMV-contributor Tyler Chadwick discussing a Javen Tanner poem, and, in a separate session, readings from Tyler, Neil Aitkin, Karen Kelsay, Elisa Pulido, Laura Stott, Holly Welker, and, we hope, more.

Sunstone West is always great fun and you’ll want to catch other panels and presentations while you’re there.

Come to L.A.!

NEIL AITKIN, TYLER

CHADWICK, THERIC

JEPSON, KAREN KELSAY,

ELISA PULIDO, LAURA

STOTT, and HOLLY WELKER

Karen Kelsay’s Light Touch: An Interview

Poet Karen Kelsay has been on my radar since Th. pointed me her direction eighteen months or so ago in conjunction with my work on Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets. She’s got an exquisite voice and her lyric is grounded in both its formal features and content that centers on making connections among individuals, generations, nature, memories.

But I’m getting ahead of myself—I’ll save my review of Karen’s work for a day in the not-so-distant future. Today it’s time for a little Q & A with Karen, Pushcart-nominated poet, journal editor extraordinaire, and virtual friend. She has been the featured poet in The New Formalist and Unfettered Verse: A Journal of Poetry, has made frequent appearances at Wilderness Interface Zone, and has two collections of poetry that occasion this interview: Dove on a Church Bench, which was released in April by Punkin Books, and Lavender Song, which will be released later this month by Fortunate Childe Press.

What follows is the result of a back-and-forth Karen and I shared via email over the past month or so. I want to thank her especially for humoring my string of follow-up questions! Continue reading “Karen Kelsay’s Light Touch: An Interview”

Poetry in Print — April 2011

After four years of preparing this bibliography of poetry by Mormons in print for National Poetry Month, I thought I might have discovered most of the poets and books out there. However, this year I’ve discovered several more that I missed, and began the process of looking back through the Mormon journals to see who I may have missed.

Continue reading “Poetry in Print — April 2011”

Poetry in Print — April 2010

This is the third year that I have prepared a bibliography of poetry by Mormons in print for National Poetry Month. Surprisingly, this year we only added titles to the list — nothing went out-of-print. But don’t think that is because all these books are easy to find.

Continue reading “Poetry in Print — April 2010”