About this Event
Poet KATIE PETERSON at Books Inc. Alameda!
Come join us for an evening with the talented poet Katie Peterson at Books Inc. in Alameda! Get ready to be captivated by her beautiful words and powerful storytelling. This in-person event is a must for poetry lovers and anyone looking for inspiration. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to meet the author and dive into her world of creativity. See you there!
About the book:
Peterson unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment.
Confusion frames the human predicament. In Katie Peterson’s Fog and Smoke, confusion is, literally, our climate. Writing to, and from, the California landscape, Peterson sees fog and smoke as literal—one a natural weather event, the other an aftereffect of the West’s drought-caused fires—but they are also metaphysical. Fog and smoke subsume the poet and reflect the true conditions (and frustrations) of our ability to perceive and to connect. She writes, “I’ve been speaking about it at a distance. / Now I want to talk about its thickness. / A person could get killed in here.”
The collection moves through three sections: First, the poet follows her local fog’s cyclical journey of descent and dispersion; second, in a sort of pastoral interlude, she travels widely, almost erratically, to the California desert, the greater world, and ancient history; finally, she descends into the enclosed space of the household, and the increased confinement and intimacy of raising a child during the pandemic. Peterson unfolds the small moments that make up our lives and reveals the truths contained within them, and her poems capture the lyricism of our daily rhythms—the interruptions, dialogues, and epiphanies.
“Peterson’s prickly, playful book is filled with quasi parables . . . Poetry is always about what’s being said and not said, but rarely are the two so expertly intertwined.” —David Orr, The New York Times Book Review
Katie Peterson is the author of the poetry collections This One Tree; Permission; The Accounts, winner of the Rilke Prize; and A Piece of Good News. She lives in California and teaches at the University of California, Davis.
Alisha Dietzman is the author of Sweet Movie (Beacon, 2023), selected by Victoria Chang for the 2022 National Poetry Series, and shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize in 2024. Her chapbook, Slow Motion Something For No Reason (Factory Hollow Press, 2022), was the editors’ choice selection for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize. Her poetry has appeared in or will appear in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Books Inc., 1344 Park Street, Alameda, United States
USD 0.00
