Katherine Hastings

Katherine Hastings is an American Poet living in Santa Rosa, California.

Biography

Katherine Hastings has had poems published in numerous journals and anthologies, including "The Comstock Review", "Roque Dalton Redux" (Cedar Hill Press), "Rattle", "Calyx", "California Quarterly", "Diner", "Birmingham Arts Journal", "Potpourri", "New College Review" and "Parthenon West Review" as well as several books, listed below. She earned her MFA in Writing from Vermont College and serves as a contributing editor for Hunger Mountain – A Journal of Arts and Letters. Hastings grew up in San Francisco and currently lives in Sonoma County, California, where she founded and hosts the WordTemple Poetry Series, bringing well-established poets together with poets who have not yet published a book of poems. Poets who have read or are scheduled to read in the series include Jane Hirshfield, David St. John, David Meltzer, Diane DiPrima, Jack and Adelle Foley, Ilya Kaminsky, Al Young, Michael McClure, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Kay Ryan and many others.

Hastings hosts a show, also called WordTemple, on Santa Rosa's public radio station KRCB 91 FM, an NPR affiliate.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes of her book "Sidhe," "I have read and reread your SIDHE. Lovely...It's your veiled history."

Poet and critic Jack Foley (poet) says "Katherine Hastings' SIDHE (pronounced "she") is an illuminating and fanciful exploration of sexual and ethnic identity. It is also great fun. The poem's primary strength is its marvelous openness as ancestral Irish voices mingle suddenly with the voices of the street or with voices from the past. SIDHE is not a homily on how to live a life, but it is a brilliant enactment of how a life may be conceived. The poem posits a ritual of problematical growth in a San Francisco which now exists primarily in Katherine Hastings' imagination. The "Dark mother" who haunts the poem is simultaneously Ireland and the massive feminine figure (what Jung would have called an archetype) which constantly nudges this poet into the most varied of expressions. Call her Hastings' angel and -- through the medium of this rich, gorgeous tapestry of a poem -- our own."

Works

"Wolf Spider" (dPress) 2005

"Sidhe" (dPress) 2006

"Lonidier Rampant" (The Small Change Series, WordTemple Press) 2007

"Bird. Song. Knife. Heart." (The Small Change Series, WordTemple Press) 2008

External links

* [http://www.wordtemple.com/ official site of WordTemple Poetry Series]
* [http://www.krcb.org/ official site for KRCB FM