KAREN WHALLEY
Karen Whalley is the author of two poetry collections, My Own Name Seems Strange to Me, winner of the 2018 Off the Grid Poetry Prize, and The Rented Violin (Ausable Press, 2003). She is a graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and recipient of the Rona Jaffe Award for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Sun Magazine, American Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, and other journals. She lives in Port Angeles, Washington.
“Fluent, full of breakthroughs and surprises, these extraordinary poems never seem to falter; Whalley is an extraordinary poet.””
“How, though grounded in the real world, Whalley’s astute observations reach deeply, easily, into philosophy and meaning.””
My Own Name Seems Strange to me
Poems by Karen Whalley
Karen Whalley’s second book is a compelling account of domestic fragmentation, isolation, and loss. At its core are twin wounds—the death of a father and the end of a marriage—and the struggle to define oneself in the ensuing absences. At the same time, these poems are teeming with lucid vitality and life, from the frail perfections of butterfly wings to the strangeness of an elk in traffic. Both quiet and profound, spiritual and searching, Whalley’s transcendent collection bravely questions the nature of self, and finds joy—a kind of answer—in the most unexpected of places.
