Kimberly Ann Priest
Author & Educator
Books
Floralia
UNSOLICITED PRESS
forthcoming Autumn 2025
tether & lung
TEXAS REVIEW PRESS
forthcoming Spring 2025
Like the finest impressionist paintings, these poems’ medium of linguistic light and shadow render the many nuances of a heartfelt and hard-won life, testament to the joys and sorrows of womanhood, motherhood, and marriage. Like the most compelling collections, this book elucidates our understanding of struggles and hopes with utterly unique and surprising tropes.
Richard Blanco, fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet and author of Homeland of my Body
With horse (gelding) as totem creature and knife (for the cutting of flowers and food) as totem object, tether and lung moves deftly and with sustained lyric intelligence through a bucolic world in breakdown. Lives, many lives, are at stake in these poems presented with an unresolved and mesmerizingly nuanced clarity that is human and true.
Dennis Hinrichsen, author of Dominion + Selected Poems
Slaughter
the One Bird
SUNDRESS PUBLICATIONS
"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
Chapbooks
The Optimist
Shelters in Place
HARBOR EDITIONS
"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, author of tether
still life
PANK BOOKS
"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
Parrot Flower
GLASS POETRY PRESS
"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