Kimberly Ann Priest
Author & Educator
Floralia
About the book...
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Floralia documents the intimate nature of sexual assault against women, a crime that is often committed against the female body by a man familiar to the assaulted woman. Due to these intimacies, individual assaults can seem complicated to those viewing the circumstances from a safe distance and fuel suspicious attitudes towards the victim. Written in three sections, these poems and a radio play confront public voyuering while providing a window into intimate partner abuse, exploring the interiority of the victim.
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tether & lung
About the book....
Set in rural Michigan, tether & lung embraces a level of honest sensuality and vulnerability as a heterosexual woman grapples with the needs of her own body as her closeted homosexual husband seeks solace in the animals he loves—his horses—thus isolating his family and, thereby, directing the othering he feels within himself towards his wife and children. These poems probe the nature of relationships where emotional extremes are often held in tension and betrayals are not easily healed or resolved. Here, compassion and contempt face one another, asking difficult questions concerning gender, alienation, child-rearing, domestic violence, and divorce.
Slaughter
the One Bird
These are powerful, courageous poems that are needed in the world—they give voice to the voiceless and they make space for the vulnerable, ultimately showing us the strength to make it through. Slaughter the One Bird is a remarkable collection that reminded me of the incredible power of women poets and well-written poems.
Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides
The Optimist
Shelters in Place
Through the lens of collective tragedy and the lived experience of a woman alone, these neo-confessional poems balance the ache of imagining families “sobbing” in hospital parking lots with the personal loss of long isolation, the fresh finality of divorce, and even the tedious need to clean the shower.
-Lisa Fay Coutley, tether
Parrot Flower
In a poetry that is as compassionate as it is beautiful, Priest shows us how even attempting to name a trauma is a nonlinear effort, a heart’s ongoing work.
-Chen Chen, author of When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Future Possibilities
Still Life
Hold tight, this collection will take you on a journey, as it leans into the underbelly of “where the smoke becomes insightful.”
Kelly Grace Thomas, author of Boat Burned