Photo credit: Kara PerryKathryn Kirkpatrick
Kathryn Kirkpatrick is a poet and literary scholar who writes about human relationships with the more-than-human world.
Creature
"These are poems rooted in landscape and memory, about mothers and daughters, love and mourning, and the harrowing context in which we now find ourselves."
Natalie Eleanor Patterson, Jacar Press, author of Plainhollow
"With the collies, crows, butterflies, wrens, cows, and calves she loves, the dying mother she grieves, the former self she remembers, the beautiful, startling poems of Creature invite us to experience the necessary embodiment of care."
Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat
"The smart, subtle Kirkpatrick stakes out fresh territory in family and animal relationships, all the while giving us superbly crafted poems that blend head and heart."
Molly Peacock, author of The Widow's Crayon Box
Enraptured Space
Gender, Class, and Ecology in the Work of Paula Meehan
"Drawing on her own lived experience as a practicing poet, Kirkpatrick explores how scholarship is grounded in an imaginative exchange between words on the page and the material conditions of the scholar who works to inhabit them. With chapters of literary analysis swimming in a conversation between poets, this book breaches the boundaries between criticism and memoir, suggesting ways that every scholar is transformed by the subjects they study."
West Virginia University Press
"A polished, moving, deeply intelligent study of Paula Meehan’s poetry, which goes beyond a single poet’s life and work to illuminate an entire culture....I am unaware of another seriously academic study of a contemporary poet’s work written by another poet."
Maureen O’Connor, University College Cork and author of Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction
The Fisher Queen
These poems explore the multiple exiles of living in a woman’s body; traversing boundaries of region, nation, and class; and confronting human violations of the natural world. Moving between the quotidian and the mythic, Kirkpatrick’s multi-voiced lyrics constitute a powerful quest.
“A younger woman would not have fought these battles, endured, reflected, returned and reclaimed as Kirkpatrick has done. Her poems create a path and a lamp for those women poets who come after her.” —Greta Gaard, author of Critical Ecofeminism
“varied, cohesive, accomplished, and deliciously badass”
—Jeanne Larsen, author of What Penelope Chooses
“In a world where violence against ecosystems and nonhuman life is intimately connected to violence against women, moments of celebration are also resistance.”
—Catherine Carter, author of By Stone and Needle
Reading from The Fisher Queen
Virtual Western NC Literary Festival
News & Events
Connect with Kathryn
I enjoy collaborative work on multi-disciplinary projects, especially those addressing climate and environment. My poetry and scholarship in animal studies is grounded in critical ecofeminism. When writing with and about other animals, I always assume that they are the subjects of their own lives.
Photo credit: Kara Perry