ERIE, Pa. -- Katie Ford’s approach to poetry may seem unconventional, but it’s deliberate as well.
“I am not a fast writer,” said the author of “Colosseum” and “Blood Lyrics” in a 2008 interview. “Poems, to me, are events, occurrences, not exercises or tasks. Many things — not stars, not fates, not the gods — have to come into alignment for a poem to occur.”
It’s an approach that has served her well. The Portland native’s second poetry collection, “Colosseum,” was named Publishers Weekly’s best book of the year for 2008, and the Virginia Quarterly Review named it a Top 10 poetry book of 2008.
Ford will read excerpts from her latest collection, “Blood Lyrics,” Sept. 17 when the 2015-16 edition of the Creative Writers Reading Series kicks off at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Her 6 p.m. reading and the reception that will precede it are free and open to the public. Both events will be held in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel.
“Ford possesses a subtle brilliance; her poems move slantwise, piercing to the heart of whatever matter is under her pen," wrote Craig Morgan Teicher in a 2014 review for NPR.org. "In this case, that's the strangeness and fear that accompanies a trying new motherhood. Her work is unsung, and it’s time people start singing about it.”
Ford’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Poetry magazine and Poetry International. The Harvard University graduate has also been the recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Levis Reading Prize. She currently teaches in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, and lives with her husband, novelist Josh Emmons.
The Creative Writers Reading Series is produced by Penn State Behrend’s bachelor of fine arts in creative writing degree program with support from the Clarence A. and Eugenie Baumann Smith Fund. The complete 2015-16 schedule is as follows:
- Sept. 17 – Katie Ford, poet
- Oct. 15 – Heather Slomski, fiction
- Oct. 22 – Elizabeth Kadetsky, fiction
- March 24 – Al Maginnes, poet
- April 7 – Wendell Mayo, fiction
- April 14 – John Gallaher, poet
For additional information call 814-898-6108 or visit behrend.psu.edu/readings.