Announcing the April Author in the Spotlight

Announcing the April Author in the Spotlight

April is one of my favorite months because it is National Poetry Month and Autism Awareness week falls during the first week of April.  I love highlighting poetry this month.  If you don't read poetry you need to give it a try.

I'm excited to share with you that one of my poems will be published on April 5th.  This is my first published poem.  I'm also excited to feature a Minnesota Poet this month and her name is Kirsten Dierking.  We met at the Twin Cities book fair in October, 2015.  I was drawn to Kirsten because of her book covers. They are so beautiful and I think you will agree that her poems are also thought provoking and lovely.

Here are the three poetry books she has written and their synopsis from Goodreads.

Tether

Poetry. In her third book of poems, Kirsten Dierking explores the way our everyday desires shape themselves into the miraculous, like "antlers branched in sprays of bone against the sky." In selecting Dierking's work for a McKnight Artist Fellowship, three-time National Book Award finalist Marilyn Nelson wrote, "I found these slight, reticent poems tender and thoughtful. They demonstrate the virtue of withholding, showing that sometimes less is definitely more." TETHER is an exploration of fluid, unseen grace as it manifests around us, building an uncanny and potent now.

One Red Eye

Perhaps the first full-length work of its kind, One Red Eye is an unexpected book, an intimate story of violence and survival, rape and re-birth, told in verse. In concise, candid, and understated poems, Dierking shares the brutal truth of her own rape experience, while at the same time, demonstrating the possibility of spiritual recovery from sexual assault. This is the story of a life brought to a disastrous standstill, and the subsequent acts of common kindness that allow the author to recapture hope, and move into a changed, but salvageable future. Tough and articulate, One Red Eye defies the silence and guilt that so often surrounds the crime of rape.

Northern Oracle

Poetry. On Kirsten Dierking's collection of poems NORTHERN ORACLE: "Kirsten Dierking's poems often focus on the small things, the unnoticed natural world around her, 'the unknowable swimmers' in the water beneath the canoe, or the realization of the 'glorious spirit' inside a wild flower. It is this seeing that gives her poems their joy. But it is the unflinching realization that 'you love things that can't help leaving' and that, 'you can't stop/ yourself becoming/ all the white, / expressionless snow' that gives the poems their strength"--Louis Jenkins

This month you can expect a giveaway, a book review, an author interview and hopefully a guest post.

This is going to be a great month.
Go forth and read a poem.
Happy Reading!