An Afternoon with Poet Karen Petersen

Join award-winning poet Karen Petersen as she discusses her latest book, Influences: The Irish Poems. The collection reflects the region's unforgiving history and terrible beauty with a kind of wry cynicism, dark humor, and love of Nature characteristic of the Irish philosophy of existence. 

These poems yield to the unvarnished sentiment of the "now," whether on the darkness of death or the rambunctiousness of feral felines. Q&A session to follow.

"Karen Petersen‘s poetic mastery elicits an Irish Arcadia underscored by crushing hailstorms and slushy bogs, pierced by a consistently startling rebirth into sunrise. Her clear-eyed expression is fresh and sensate, and the Influences poems—of delight, alarm, and astonishment—gift us the Emerald Isle’s irrepressibly joyful spirit and soul."
–Keith H. Emmons: author of A Thousand Days of Tantra, and Who Built the Train Wreck?

Petersen has published poetry, short stories, and flash both nationally and internationally. Her poems have been translated into Persian and Spanish, and she has been nominated for numerous prizes, including ten Pushcarts, and long-listed for the UK’s international Bridport Prize, Forward Prize, and Australia’s Peter Porter Prize.  In 2023, her chapbook Trembling, published by Kelsay Books, won the Wil Mills Award, judged by Annie Finch, and her poem “The Price of Love” was nominated for Best of the Net. More information can be found at: karenpetersenwriter.com

For accommodations such as translations, ASL interpreters, or disability needs, please email library@santafenm.gov or call the Library.