Idaho Prize for Poetry winner, Melissa Kwasny, will read from her new book, Where Outside the Body Is the Soul, on Tuesday, Oct. 24, on the second-floor atrium at the Nampa Campus Academic Building (NCAB). In her latest book, Kwasny explores ancient ideas of the soul through prose and free verse poetry, focusing on shamanic and ecological ideas of the soul in the natural world. Where Outside the Body Is the Soul is part of the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series published by the University of Washington Press.
Kwasny is teaching a poetry craft workshop on Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 4 p.m. in NCAB 309. Both the reading and the workshop are free and open to the public.
Idaho Prize for Poetry judge, Christopher Howell, describes Kwasny’s work as fitting into “the great tradition of meditative poetry”. She focuses on nature imagery in the West including petroglyphs, plants, animals, and her home state of Montana.
Kwasny is the author of many poetry books, as well as a collection of essays. She explores the prose poetry form in much of her work and her book, Reading Novalis in Montana, was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2009 by Huffington Post. Additional poetry collections by Kwasny include Thistle, Pictograph, and The Nine Senses.