Celebrate National Poetry Month with Northwest author

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Northwest author

Contact: David Axelrod | Ars Poetica Lecture Series at EOU
541-962-3633 | daxelrod@eou.edu

April 2, 2013

LA GRANDE, Ore. (EOU) – Visiting writer Keetje Kuipers will read from her poetry collection “Beautiful in the Mouth” for the Ars Poetica Lecture Series at EOU Tuesday, Apr. 16.

The free, public reading begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Pierce Library Reference Room and is in celebration of National Poetry Month. A book signing will follow.

“Beautiful in the Mouth” was published in 2010 and is Kuipers first collection of poems. According to the author, “Poems are beautiful, necessary attempts… [to] declare ourselves over and over again, and still never really find a way to understand how we exist.” 

Author Dorianne Laux said the collection “travel[s] the landscape of body, desire, loss and love’s conflicted ecstasies…[Kuipers’ poems are] indelible with mourning, grace and an elegant wisdom.”

Poet Thomas Lux also praised Kuipers’ work, stating “I was immediately struck by the boldness of imagination, the strange cadences and wild music of these poems.”

Kuipers was born in Pullman, Wash., has lived around the U.S., but still calls the Northwest home. Currently she divides her time between Auburn, Ala., and Missoula, Mont., with her family and dog, Bishop.

After completing her undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College, Kuipers earned a master’s of fine arts from the University of Oregon. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University from 2009-2011, and more recently the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College.

Her current manuscript is “The Keys to the Jail.” In this forthcoming collection of poems, she explores the crimes individuals commit against themselves, and the redemption of returning to the self that is left behind.