Katie Peterson’s collections of poetry include This One Tree, Permission, The Accounts, winner of the 2014 Rilke Prize from the University of North Texas,and A Piece of Good News, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her fifth book, Life in a Field, a collaboration with photographer Young Suh, was selected by Rachel Zucker for the 2020 Omnidawn Open Book Prize and was published in May 2021. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Radcliffe Institute, and Yaddo. This year, her poems have appeared in the Birmingham Poetry Review, Changes Review, Literary Imagination, and the New York Review of Books. She directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at UC Davis where she is Professor of English and a Chancellor’s Fellow.
“…poetry as a way of feeling and standing in ideas, difficult ideas, sorrowful ideas, beautiful ideas…”
This is a wide ranging discussion where we talk about Katie’s vocation as a poet and a teacher. We talk about belonging and loss, about faith and family, and discuss the importance of beautiful language in our lives. We even consider whether we’ve all misunderstood Adam’s naming of the animals. I’m grateful to Katie for her openness and generosity of time and think you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did. As always, thanks for reading and listening.
Katie’s books
- This One Tree
- Permission
- The Accounts
- A Piece of Good News
- Life in a Field
- Robert Lowell: Brief Selected Poems
Other books and films mentioned in this episode:
- When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry ed. by Joy Haro, Leanne Howe, and Jennifer Elise Foerster
- Au Hasard Balthazar
Other people mentioned in this episode:
- John Anderson
- Emily Dickinson
- T. S. Eliot
- Jennifer Elise Foerster
- Jack Gilbert
- Jorie Graham
- Linda Gregg
- Robert Hass
- Seamus Heaney
- Rupi Kaur
- Ovid
- Michael Peterson
- Molly Peterson
- Petrarch
- Shel Silverstein
- Wallace Stevens
- Young Suh
- W. B. Yeats
- Vincent Van Gogh
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