People in the know (and by this I mean small-press publishers, independent bookstore owners and devoted readers) say that poetry finds its audience one reader (or, I would add, listener) at a time. With new books, it’s mostly up to the poet to take her book from place to place, giving public readings.
One of the great pleasures of my role at KUOW 94.9 — and now as Washington’s poet laureate — is to help connect other poets’ poems to reader/listeners.
Once a month on KUOW, I present the work of a Pacific Northwest poet. This month I featured two poems by the late Kim-An Lieberman, who passed away in December 2013, a few weeks before her tremendous second collection, IN ORBIT, was published by Blue Begonia Press.
You can listen online. I hope you will. These poems resonate with each re-reading, each re-hearing.
Jack Straw will host a reading of Kim-An’s poems in Seattle on May 4, at 2p. I’ll post more information about that as it becomes available.